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WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. 



NEW ILLUSTRATED LIBRARY EDITION. 



VOLUME XV. 



PICTURES FROM ITALY, AND AMERICAN NOTES. 



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PICTURES FROM ITALY, 
AND AMERICAN NOTES 



FOR 



GENERAL CIRCULATION 



BY 



CHAELES DICKENS 



WITH STEEL-PLATE ILLUSTRATIONS 




NEW YORK 

PUBLISHED BY KURD AND HOUGHTON 

eamftriUse: C5e EiijermUe Press 

1877 

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Copyright, 1877, 
By HURD and HOUGHTON. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge : 
Prifttcd by H. O. Houghton atid Company. 



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i.2 



CONTENTS. 

k 

PICTUKES FROM ITALY. 

PAGB 
THE EEADER'S passport • . . 1 

GOING TUKOUGH FRANCE 4 

LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF AVIGNON , , . .12 

AVIGNON TO GENOA 21 

GENOA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOl* ,26 

TO PARMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA 57 

THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA ,,..«.. 66 

AN ITALIAN DREAM 72 

BY VERONA, MANTFA, AND MILAN, ACROSS THE PASS OF THE 

SIMPLON INTO SWITZERLAND 81 

TO ROME BY PISA AND SIENA 97 

ROME ...•• Ill 

A RAl'ID DIORAMA — 

TO NAPLES 156 

NAPLES • • . . . 159 

POMPEII— HEkOULANF-UM 163 

PiESTTJM 165 



VI COMMENTS. 

PAGE 

A. EAPID DIORAMA (continued)—^ 

VESUVIUS 107 

RETURN TO NAPLES . • 170 

MONTE CASINO 174 

FLORENCE 177 



AMERICAN NOTES. 

CEAPTEB 

I. GOING. AWAY • • . 185 

II. THE PASSAGE OUT •••••••.. 193 

III. BOSTON . .1. ..... . 208 

rV. AN AMERICAN RAILROAD. — LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY 

SYSTEM 245 

V. WORCESTER. — THE CONNECTICUT RrVTER. — HARTFORD. — 

NEW HAVEN. — TO NEW YORK 254 

VI. NEW YORK • . . 263 

VII. PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITARY PRISON .... 281 

VIII. WASHINGTON. — THE LEGISLATURE. — AND THE PRESIDENT'S 

HOUSE 297 

IX. A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. — VIRGINIA 
ROAD, AND A BLACK DRIVER.— RICHMOND. — BALTIMORE. 
— THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A GLIMPSE OF THE CITY. 
— A CANAL BOAT 313 

X. SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC 
ECONOMY, AND ITS PASSENGERS. — JOURNEY TO PHTSBURG 
ACllOSS THE ALLEGHANY MOUNTAINS. — riTTSBURQ . .330 



CONTENTS. Vn 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XI. FROM PITTSBUKG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAMBOAT. 

— CINCINNATI 341 

XII. FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN 
STEAIMBOAT ; AND FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN 
ANOTHKR. — ST. LOUIS 350 

XIII. A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK . . 362 

XIV. RETURN TO CINCINNATI. — A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM THAT 

CITY TO COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. — SO, BY 
LAKE ERIE, TO THE FALLS OF NIAGARA .... 370 

XV. IN CANADA ; TORONTO ; KINGSTON ; MONTREAL ; QUEBEC ; 

ST. JOHN'S. — IN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN; LEBANON; 
THE SHAKER VILLAGE ; AND WEST POINT . . . 387 

XVI. THE PASSAGE HOME 405 

XVII. SLAVERY 413 

XXYin. CONCLUDING KEMAKKS 429 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
— • — 

PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

Portrait of Charles Dickers Frontispiece. -^ 

Civil axx> Military 45 "^ 

Italian Peasants 68*^ 

The Chiffonier 95 ■ 

In the Catacombs 132 '" 

A]\IERICAN NOTES. 

View of Mr. Dickens's Residence 185' 

Eotgrants 192 

The Solitary Prisoner 290 

Black and White 304 

The Little Wife , 358 



INTEODUCTION TO PICTUEES FEOI ITALY. 



BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 



In 1845, Dickens returned to England for a few months. 
He had resided on the Continent for more than a year. Soon 
after his arrival he was attracted by a project to establish a new 
journal of the first class, to be called " The Daily News," and 
of which he was to be the editor. EQs friend Forster vainly 
dissuaded him from embarking in such a perilous enterprise, 
knowing that he was physically and mentally unequal to the 
constant strain on his energies, which the management of a daily 
newspaper would imperatively demand. " In all intellectual 
labor," says Forster, " his will prevailed so strongly when he 
fixed it on any object of desire, that what else its attainment 
might exact was never duly measured ; and this led to frequent 
strain and unconscious waste of what no man could less aflbrd 
to spare." Indeed, Dickens was ludicrously out of place as the 
editor of a daily paper, and he himself soon found it out. " The 
Daily News " was first issued late in January, 1846, and on 
February 9, of the same year, he resigned his control of it, and 
was succeeded in the editorship by Forster, who also seems to 
have had a hard time during the period when it was under his 
management. The journal thus in auspiciously begun, and entail- 
ing all kinds of vexation and disappointment on its founders, 
gradually forced its way into a prominent position among the 
newspapers of Great Britain, and is now recognized on both 
sides of the Atlantic, as a formidable opponent of everything 
which honest and intelligent liberals oppose, and as a powerful 



xii INTRODUCTION TO PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

champion of everything which honest and intelligent liberals re- 
gard as true, honorable, just, and humane. The series of papers 
which Dickens contributed to " The Daily News," were called 
" Travelling Letters AVritten on the Road," and were printed 
during the months of January, February, and March, 1846. 
AVhen published in a volume, the title was altered to " Pictures 
from Italy." On the 30th of May, he left England for Switzer- 
land, where he began his admirable serial story of " Dombey 
and Son." 

The book under consideration is rightly named " Pictures 
from Italy." Readers are made at once the writer's companions, 
seeing, feeling, thinking, what he sees, feels, and thinks. The 
different chapters vary in literary merit ; but they are all good, 
and some of them eminently good. We have presented to us 
Avignon, Genoa, Bologna, Ferrara, Mantua, Yerona, INIilan, 
Rome, Naples, not only as seen by Dickens's eyes, but as passed 
through Dickens's heart and imagination. The style is as terse 
as it is vivid. Almost every word has meaning in it ; yet we 
forget the words in the delight we experience in gazing at the 
picture which the words palpably paint, by some magical dis- 
position and combination of the hues of language. Among the 
many pictures in the book, there is perhaps none which excels 
that in which the visit to the ancient palace of the popes, at 
Avignon, is described. The ruined rooms, in which the Inquisi- 
tion used to sit, were explored by Dickens under the guid- 
ance of " a little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing 
black eyes, — proof that the world hadn't conjured down the 
devil within her, though it had had between sixty and seventy 
years to do it in. . . . Such a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, 
energetic she-devil, I never beheld. She was alight and flam- 
ing, all the time. Her action was violent in the extreme. She 
never spoke without stopping expressly for the purpose. She 
stamped her feet, clutched us by the arms, flung herself into 
attitudes, hammered against walls with her keys, for mere em- 
phasis : now whispered as if the Inquisition were there still: 
now shrieked as if she were on the rack herself; and had a 



INTRODUCTION TO PICTURES FROM ITALY. xiii 

mysterious, hag-like way with her forefinger, when approaching 
the remains of some new horror — looking back and walking 
stealthily, and making horrible grimaces — that might alone 
have qualified her to walk up and down a sick man's counter- 
pane, to the exclusion of all other figures, through a whole fever." 
The description of the manner of this diabolically alert hag, from 
the time that, sitting on a mound of stones, " she throws up her 
arms and yells out like a fiend, ' La Salle de la Question,' " to 
the culminating point of the exhibition, when she flings with 
" goblin energy " a dungeon door open with a crash, and shrieks, 
" Voila les oubliettes ! " is a description hardly equaled among 
the many grotesque specimens of weird women who appear in 
Dickens's novels. 

Dickens resided long enough in Genoa to allow his mind 
tranquilly to assimilate, as it were, the whole city ; and it re- 
appears, in the long chapter on " Genoa and its Neighborhood," 
as something " rich and strange," curiously true to fact as re- 
gards mere external accuracy of observation, but still a city, not 
as we find it laid down in Murray's hand-books, but as trans- 
formed into a queer metropolis of what we may call Dickens- 
land. His imagination indeed ran riot in Genoa ; and among 
the thousands of descriptions of the place, his description still 
remains as unique. Other pictures he gives of Italian towns, 
cities, and people, have each their special charm, though he often 
journeyed too rapidly to catch more than a flying glimpse of 
localities worthy of a more careful observation and assimilation. 
The reader, however, cannot fail to notice that the author is out 
on a year's vacation, — that his genius is allowed to disport it- 
self at" will on a long series of lazily indulgent holidays, — and 
that his will, generally so prominent in all that he enjoyed, as 
well as in all that he resolved, yields itself gracefully to the 
Italian atmosphere, and becomes almost submerged in the stream 
of new impressions that flow into his mind. As a representa- 
tion of Italy the book is of course defective ; for, in the indo- 
lent surrender of the author to the scenes which pass before his 
eyes, the higher qualities of the Italian character are overlooked. 



xiv INTRODUCTION TO PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

In reading his descriptions of picturesque squalor, ignorance, 
laziness, beggary, and dirt in the population, and of picturesque 
decay in once renowned cities, we seem to be sad witnessess of 
a nation in ruins ; but it was only a few years after these " Pic- 
tures" were painted, that the dormant forces of the people, 
roused by the genius and energy of Italians, so widely different 
in character as Cavour, Garibaldi, and Mazzini, succeeded in 
establishing a " United Italy." 



INTEODUGTION TO AMEICAN NOTES. 



BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 



Dickens sailed, or rather steamed, for the United States, 
early in January, 1842. During the previous six months he 
had been one of the most radical of the English liberals, dread- 
ing a Tory reaction and contributing many a squib and song 
to the journals, for the purpose of aiding those writers who were 
bent on covering the reviving Tory party with ridicule, contempt, 
and obloquy. One of his versified invectives, called " The Fine 
Old English Gentleman, to be Said or Sung at all Conserva- 
tive Dinners," is given by Forster ; and it breathes a spirit of 
wrath and scorn against the Tory gentry and nobility, which 
would not misbecome a Chartist in his wildest rage at the pre- 
tensions put forward by the Privileged Classes. Nothing in his 
criticism of the United States equals it in bitterness. Indeed, 
in indignantly surveying the political outlook in his own country, 
he talked to his friends " of carrying off himself, and his house- 
hold gods, like Coriolanus, to a world elsewhere ! " Thank 
God, he exclaimed, " there is Van Diemen's Land. That 's my 
comfort. Now I wonder if I should make a good settler ! I 
wonder if I went to a new colony with my head, hands, legs, 
and health, I should force myself to the top of the social milk- 
pot, and live upon the cream ! What do you think ? Upon 
my word I believe I should." It cannot be said, therefore, that 
he set out on his American journey with any prejudice against 
republican institutions. The trouble with him was that he 
knew little or nothing of the science of government, of political 



XVI INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

economy, or of the underlying laws which, with all the protests 
of individuals from a thousand various points of view, still make 
human society possible. Nature, in lavishing on him so many 
precious gifts, had seen fit to deny him either the philosophic 
spirit or the philosophic mind. No man's eyes were keener 
than his to detect the minutest details of any subject ; but the 
brain above the eyes, the power of generalizing details, of con- 
necting them in their right relations, was comparatively left out 
in his intellectual constitution. He was a humanitarian and a 
humorist ; one of the best and most delightful of humanitarians 
and humorists ; but he was, in no sense, a philosopher; and to 
write anything about the United States in the year 1842, which 
was worth the consideration of thinkers, demanded powers which 
he did not possess. This was not the worst of it. The powers 
which he did possess beyond any other person then living, 
found but very imperfect expression in the " American Notes." 
As to his lack of philosophic grasp of the subject of the 
United States and its institutions, two persons may be quoted, M. 
de Tocqueville and Macaulay. When in the French chamber 
of deputies, Dickens's book on America was referred to, De 
Tocqueville, in reply, ridiculed the notion that any opinions of 
Dickens on the matter in the debate should be quoted as in any 
respect authoritative. This was the somewhat contemptuous 
judgment, passed by the philosophical author of '' Democracy 
in America," on the author of " American Notes." Macaulay, 
before the work was published, wrote to Macvey Napier, the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review, " I wish Dickens's book to be 
kept for me. I have never written a word on that subject, and 
I have a great deal in my head. Of course I shall be courteous 
to Dickens, whom I know, and whom I think both a man of 
genius and a good-hearted man, in spite of some faults of taste." 
When the volumes appeared, he gave up the idea of making 
them even the excuse for an article. " This morning," he writes 
to Napier (Oct. 19, 1842), "I received Dickens's book. I have 
now read it. It is impossible for me to review it ; nor do I 
think that you would wish me to do so. I cannot praise it, and 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. XVll 

I will not cut it up. I cannot praise it, though it contains a few 
lively dialogues and descriptions ; for it seems to be, on the whole, 
a failure. It is written like the worst j)arts of 'Humphrey's 
Clock.' What is meant to be easy and sprightly is vulgar and 
flippant, as in the first two pages. What is meant to be fine is 
a great deal too fine for me, as the description of the Fall of 
Niatjara. A reader who wants an amusino^ account of the 
United States had better go to Mrs. Trollope, coarse and ma- 
lignant as she is. A reader who wants information about 
American politics, manners, and literature, had better go even 
to so poor a creature as Buckingham. In short, I pronounce 
the book, in spite of some gleams of genius, at once frivolous and 
dull. Therefore, I will not praise it. Neither will I attack it ; 
first because I have eaten salt with Dickens ; secondly, because 
he is a good man, and a man of real talent ; thirdly, because he 
hates slavery as heartily as I do ; and fourthly, because I wish 
to see him enrolled in our blue-and-yellow corps, where he may 
do excellent service as a skirmisher and sharp-shooter." 

Macaulay evidently hoped that Dickens's book would be good 
enough to afford him an opportunity of discussing the future 
of the United States, as far as it depended on the operation of 
the principle of universal suffrage. He had an almost comical 
horror of a government which relied for its support, not on 
property and the intelligence which the possession of property 
implies, but on a wild waste of voters the majority of whom 
had neither property nor intelligence. As long as there was an 
immense extent of unoccupied land in the country, he thought 
the inevitable agrarian catastrophe might be postponed; but 
as soon as the time came when population harshly pressed on 
subsistence the voting majority would destroy civilization, or 
the voting minority of men of property and intelligence would 
destroy liberty. 

Dickens, in his book, never seriously raised the question, for 
generalization of such compass was not his forte. Macaulay's 
opinions on this point are therefore to be found, not in the " Ed- 
inburgh Review," but in his letters to Mr. Randall, the biog- 
b 



xviii INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

rapher of Jefferson. It is curious that all the conditions which 
he supjioses would destroy our system, either by the annihila- 
tion of property or liberty, have rej)eatedly arisen when finan- 
cial panics have thrown the artisans and laborers of our great 
cities out of employment. The voters, " told by the head," have 
generally gone on voting for their favorite candidates, even 
when ignorance and hunger combined might have been sup- 
posed inducements enough to urge them to seek relief by adopt- 
ing schemes of spoliation ; but their elected representatives have 
never dreamed of destroying property, except, occasionally, by 
stealing it under the forms of law. The most hateful dema- 
gogues of our big cities, lifted to power by the votes of the ig- 
norant and the indigent, are so gorged with public plunder that 
they would be the last of all legislators to remove a single safe- 
guard which protects them in their ill-got gains. What they 
steal they naturally desire to keep ; and the most conservative 
adherents of the principle that property is sacred, are the rough 
and rowdy gentlemen who control the votes of the most vicious 
and miserable inhabitants of our metropolitan cities. Even 
property in negro slaves, the most repulsive, it would seem, of 
all property, found its hardiest defenders in the representatives 
of the vilest " slums " of the city of New York. There are, on 
Macaulay's idea of civilization as resting fundamentally on the 
security of property, no more potent advocates of " Order," and 
no more furious assailants of the eccentric innovators who de- 
sire to make Law more and more synonymous with Justice, than 
those legal, respectable, well-to-do rogues, who are elected to 
office and power by foolish and ill-to-do constituencies. Most 
radical measures of improvement have their birth in country dis- 
tricts ; the cities, which might be supposed to be centres of an- 
archy, are apt to be the strongholds of the stupidest conserva- 
tism ; for there are no champions of property more sturdy in 
affirming its sacredness than those who have acquired it by chi- 
canery and theft. Macaulay's mistake was in supposing that 
universal suffrage would give every uneducated, needy, misera- 
ble, or rascally person a voice in the government. In fact the 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xix 

votes of " the dangerous classes " are controlled by a few men, 
ranging from the leader of a hundred voters to the leader of a 
hundred thousand. A poor, ignorant, suffering, almost starv- 
ing, constituency is the easiest of all constituencies for a skillful 
politician, whether he be honest or dishonest, to manage. The 
voters are homogeneous. It is in the educated or half educated 
districts of the country, among the provident people who earn 
their living easily, and lay up something for the possible evil 
day of want, that " the homogeneous," in Herbert Spencer's 
phrase, is most rapidly developed into " the heterogeneous " — 
which he considers the law of progress. There the casting of 
a vote represents the opinion of a man, — a will and individu- 
ality being put into the ballot-box as well as a piece of paper 
on which the name of a candidate is printed. In such districts 
the politician is troubled and bothered ; he has to go through a 
whole course of mental gymnastics, ducking here, leaping there, 
torturing his intellectual frame into all kinds of twists and turns; 
but in the metropolis, he has only to consult with a few leaders 
of opinion, that is of persons who hold in their hands the votes 
of so-called independent citizens, and the work is done a month 
before the result is stated in the record of votes. There is no 
question that property and civilization are saved by this pro- 
cess ; for the votes mean nothing as far as the voters are con- 
cerned ; and not a single agrarian measure is advanced by the 
election of their candidate, whether he be a Republican or Demo- 
crat. If any confiscation of property occurs under this system, 
it is commonly a confiscation of the wages and comforts of the 
poor for the benefit of the rich. 

The dullness of the " American Notes," — dull in the sense 
of being "Notes" by Dickens — was due to his determination 
not to refer to the individuals he met, and not to record any of 
those overwhelmingly enthusiastic receptions and dinners which 
were so freely given in his honor. The subject of international 
copyright, on which he made eloquent speeches, and, at the 
same time, made some interested enemies, was also compara- 
tively omitted from his book. Now what he cast aside was the 



XX INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

only impprtant matter in his six month's journey in the United 
States. Macaulay's contemptuous criticism was, in the main, 
true. There are passages, here and there, — such as the nobly 
pathetic one describing the emigrants he observed on the 
steamer between Montreal and Quebec, — which are in his best 
vein ; but generally the account of his adventures, by stage and 
steamboat, is but the disappointing record of " a most scattering 
and unsure observance." His genius is not there. He wrote, 
towards the close of his journey, to Forster, from Niagara Falls, 
" Oh ! the sublimated essence of comicality that I could distil, 
from the materials I have ! " That distilled essence of comical- 
ity, he reserved for " Martin Chuzzlewit ; " it is rarely to be 
observed in the " American Notes." 

Haydon, the painter, was told by Talfourd that he introduced 
Dickens to the insolent Lady Holland. " She hated the Amer- 
icans," according to Talfourd's statement, " and did not want 
Dickens to go. She said, 'Why cannot you go down to Bristol, 
and see some of the third or fourth class people, and they '11 do 
just as well ? ' " When Dickens decided to notice, in his book, 
none of the first and second class of Americans he metj but to 
confine himself to the third and fourth, and only to notice them 
except as they were his accidental companions in a not very 
extensive journey, it would seem as if a jaunt to Bristol would 
have done "just as well ; " and that crossing the Atlantic to 
meet such "vulgar creatures," as My Lady would have doubt- 
less called them, was a wasteful expenditure of time and talents. 

We have therefore to seek in other quarters any adequate rec- 
ord of Dickens's impressions of his American journey. Forster 
devotes two hundred pages of the biography of his friend to the 
private letters he received from him ; and Mr. Fields, in his de- 
lightful "Yesterdays with Authors," prints the racy letters 
which Dickens sent to Prof C. C. Felton, of Harvard College, 
during his residence in the United States, and immediately after 
his return to England. " How can I tell you," he writes to 
Forster from Boston, on January 28, 1842, "what has happened 
since that first day (of my arrival) ? How can I give you the 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xxi 

faintest notion of my reception here ; of the crowd§ that pour 
in and out the whole day ; of the people that line the streets 
when I go out ; of the cheering when I went to the theatre ; of 
the copies of verses, letters of congratulation, welcomes of all 
kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end ? There is to be 
a public dinner to me here in Boston next Tuesday, and great 
dissatisfaction has been given to the many by the high price 
(three pounds sterling) of the tickets. There is to be a ball next 
Monday week at New York, and one hundred and fifty names 
appear on the list of the committee. There is to be a dinner in 
the same place, in the same week, to which I have had an invi- 
tation, with every known name in America appended to it. . . . 
I have had deputations from the Far West, who have come from 
more than two thousand miles distance ; from the lakes, the riv- 
ers, the back-woods, the log-houses, the cities, factories, villages, 
and towns. ... 'It is no nonsense and no common feeling,' 
wrote Dr. Channing to me yesterday. ' It is all heart. There 
never was, and never will be such a triumph.' " Of the men he 
met, he speaks warmly of the professors at the Cambridge Uni- 
versity, Longfellow, Felton, Jared Sparks, as "noble fellows. 
So," he adds, " is Ken yen's friend, Ticknor. Bancroft is a fa- 
mous man ; a straightforward, manly, earnest heart, and talks 
much of you, which is a comfort. . . . Sumner is of great service 
to me." As to the people, all was rose-color at first. " There 
is no man in this town, or in this State {sic) of New England, 
who has not a blazing fire and a meat dinner every day of his 
life. A flaming sword in the air would not attract so much at- 
tention as a beggar in the streets. ... A man with seven 
heads would be no sight at all, compared with one who couldn't 
read and write." Such extravagancies as these last, simply in- 
dicate the writer's elation of soul, as he felt himself the guest 
of a nation, with everybody eager to overwhelm him with hos- 
pitalities. George Ticknor, a scholar, writer, and leader of 
society, not easily swept away by enthusiasm, wrote to John 
Kenyon : " A triumph has been prepared for him, in which the 
whole country will join. He will have a progress through the 



xxii INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

States uneqnaled since Lafayette's." Daniel Webster is said to 
have declared that Dickens " had done more to ameliorate the 
condition of the English poor than all the statesmen that Great 
Britain had sent into parliament." Dr. Channing, the ascetic saint 
and sage, while disturbed somewhat by the jollity of Dickens's 
writings, still thought that his pictures had "a tendency to awaken 
sympathy with our race, and to change the unfeeling indifferignce 
which lias prevailed towards the depressed multitude, into a 
sorrowful and indignant sensibility to their wrongs and woes.'* 

In his progress from Boston to New York he was worried 
and fatigued with attentions. It was only by a hard fight with 
landlords that he was able to pay his bills, — the committees of 
the towns on his route insisting on defraying all his expenses. 
On the steamboat between New Haven and New York, he met 
again with Professor Felton, who was going on to the Dickens 
dinner and ball at New York. '• Like most men of his class 
whom I have seen," Dickens writes, " he is a most delightful 
fellow, unaffected, hearty, genial, jolly ; quite an Englishman of 
the best sort. We drank all the porter on board, ate all the 
cold pork and cheese, and were very merry indeed." It is curi- 
ous to those of us who remember the late Professor Felton, not 
only as the most genial of men, but as a sturdy American patriot, 
a Greek scholar of the first rank, a President of Harvard Col- 
lege universally beloved by the students, to find that Dickens 
can only compliment him " as quite an Englishman of the best 
sort," whereas we are inclined to remember him as an Ameri- 
can " of the best sort." 

It was at New York that, in the midst of ovations, Dickens, 
irritated by newspaper comments on his speeches regarding 
copyright, seems to have begun to dislike his entertainers. His 
American friends advised him not to introduce the subject of 
copyright into his speeches. He appears to have attributed to 
cowardice what was intended by them as judicious advice. They 
doubtless thoudit the cause he advocated would be hindered 
rather than advanced by his appearance before the public, not 
as a guest of the nation whom all men were eager to honor, but 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xxiii 

as an English citizen, urging a change in the domestic policy of 
the United States. There is nothing that more offends the 
population of any country than the iuterference of a foreigner 
with its laws and institutions. Dickens seemed to think that 
there was something noble in the courage with which he put at 
risk his universal popularity, in order to tell the Americans, 
face to face, that they were guilty of injustice to himself and to 
his brother English authors. It is positively funny to note the 
grandiloquent way in which he writes to Forster. It seems 
that his " audacious daring " had paralyzed his friends with 
wonder. " The notion," he says, " that I, a man alone by him- 
self in America, should venture to suo'o^est to the Americans 
that there was one point in which they were neither just to their 
own countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb. 
Washington Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, 
Washington Allston, every man who writes in this country is 
devoted to the question, and not one of them dares to raise his 
voice and complain of the atrocious state of the law. It is noth- 
ing that of all men living I am the greatest loser by it. It is 
nothing that I have a claim to speak and be heard. The won- 
der is that a breathing man can be found with temerity enough 
to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their having 
done wrong." There is something almost idiotic in nonsense 
like this. Some of the writers quoted are known as offenders 
against public opinion in matters more nearly touching the 
national sensibilities than the question of international copyright; 
and that any American author, whether first rate or fifth rate, 
should have ever trembled at the idea of bluntly telling his 
countrymen, that they were wrong as to the matter of interna- 
tional copyright, is a proposition so absurd that one wonders 
how a humorist, in any possible obscuration of his faculties, 
could have had the " temerity " to advance it. The only objec- 
tion to Dickens's championship of the principle was this, that, 
under the circumstances, it was not in good taste. Had he, 
from the moment he arrived in the country, assailed negro 
slavery, and bravely expressed the convictions on that subject 



XXIV IJTTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

he has stated in his book, he might have felicitated himself on 
his " audacious daring," and perhaps have really stricken " the 
boldest " of his admirers '•' dumb." 

Dickens early adopted a contemptuous opinion of the politics 
and government of the United States. " I still reserve my opin- 
ion," he writes to Forster, "of the national character — just 
whispering that I tremble for a radical coming here, unless he 
is a radical on principle, by reason and reflection, and from the 
sense of right. I fear that if he were anything else, he would 
return home a Tory. ... I say no more on that head for two 
months from this time, save that I do fear that the heaviest blow 
ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country, in the failure 
of its example to the earth. The scenes that are passing in 
Congress now, all tending to the separation of the States, fill 
one with such a deep disgust that I dislike the very name of 
"Washington (meaning the place, not the man), and am repelled 
by the mere thought of approaching it." After the two months 
had expired, he writes again to Forster, praising certain quali- 
ties of the American people, but arriving at this conclusion : 
" I don't like the country. I would not live here, on any con- 
sideration. It goes against the grain with me. It would with 
you. I think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any English- 
man to live here, and be happy." Individual Americans he, of 
course, liked. " Washington Irving," he writes, " is a great fel- 
low. We have laughed most heartily together. He is just the 
man he ought to be. So is Dr. Channing, with whom I have 
had an interesting correspondence since I saw him last in Bos- 
ton. Ilalleck is a merry little man. Washington Allston the 
painter (who wrote ' Monaldi ') is a fine specimen of a glorious 
old genius. Longfellow, whose volume of poems I have got 
for you, is a frank, accomplished man, as well as a fine writer." 
Then again, writing from Washington, he says that " there are 
many remarkable men in the legislature, such as John Quincy 
Adams, Clay, Preston, Calhoun, and others : with whom I need 
scarcely add I have been placed in the friendliest relations. 
Adams is a fine old fellow — seventy-six years old, but with 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. XXV 

most surprising vigor, memory, readiness, and pluck. Clay is 
perfectly enchanting ; an irresistible man. There are some no- 
ble specimens, too, out of the West. Splendid men to look at, 
hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in 
various accomplishments, Indians in quickness of eye and ges- 
ture, Americans in affectionate and generous impulse. It would 
be difficult to exaggerate the nobility of some of these glorious 
fellows." One wonders on reading this, that he should after- 
wards have taken the Hon. Elijah Pogram as the type of Amer- 
ican statesmanship. " When Clay retires," he goes on to say, 
" Preston will become the leader of the Whig party. He so 
solemnly assures me that the international copyright shall and 
will be passed, that I almost begin to hope ; and I shall be en- 
titled to say, if it be, that I have brought it about." jSTothing 
can more completely show how Dickens's opinion of the coun- 
try rose or fell according to the chances of its passing an in- 
ternational copyright bill, than the sentences we have quoted. 
Senator Preston, on whom he relied, was what is called a whole- 
souled gentleman, but still a chivalric champion of the slave- 
holders ; and Calhoun, of whom he speaks with praise, was the 
great logician of liber ticide, — a man of high personal charac- 
ter, but whose incomparable powers of reasoning were devoted 
to riveting forever the chain of the slave, by closely fitting 
together every link in that chain of deductive argumentation 
which seemingly doomed him to perpetual servitude. 

Another cause of his discontent with the United States was 
the infinite fatigue he underwent, owing to the rush of the peo- 
ple to see and welcome him. It is cruel to make one man shake 
hands with a nation of men. The ovations were pleasant 
enough at first, but when the charm of novelty wore off they 
became an insufferable bore. Could Dickens have delegated 
his popularity to fifty or a hundred subordinates, he and they 
together might have had an agreeable time ; but one person is 
physically incapable of bearing such a burden of attentions, 
congratulations, and acclamations as were with generous pitiless- 
ness heaped upon him. Some men are mvenously hungry for 



xxvi INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

notoriety ; others are epicures in tasting the sweet tit-bits of 
general recognition, accepting this dainty, and rejecting that; 
but the young Englishman of thirty, named Charles Dickens, 
was hospitably forced into the condition of a sated glutton of 
popular applause, detesting the taste of the pate-de-foie-gras, and 
abhorring the aroma of the choicest Lajitte of flattery, because 
he had been surfeited with them. It is easy to conceive of the 
"unhappiness of this genuine, good natured, jovial creature, 
suffering from the persecution of a nation's courtesy and admi- 
ration. After he had been hardly more than a month in the 
country, he disconsolately wrote to Forster, from New York : 
" I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want 
to go, and see nothing that I want to see. K I turn into the 
street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home, the 
house becomes, with callers, like a fair. If I visit a public in- 
stitution, with only one friend, the directors come down incon- 
tinently, waylay me in the yard, and address me in a long 
speech. I go to a party in the evening, and am so enclosed and 
hemmed about with people, stand where I will, that I am ex- 
hausted from want of air. I dine out and have to talk about 
everything, to everybody. I go to church for quiet and there 
is a violent rush to the neighborhood of the pew I sit in, and 
the clergyman preaches at me. I take my seat in a railroad 
car, and the very conductor won't leave me alone. I get out at 
a station, and can't drink a glass of water, without having 
a hundred people looking down my throat when I open my 
mouth to swallow. Conceive what all this is ! Then by every 
post, letters on letters arrive, all about nothing, and all demand- 
ing an immediate answer. This man is offended because I 
won't live in his house ; and that man is thoroughly disgusted 
because I won't go out more than four times in one evening. I 
have no rest or peace, and am in a perpetual worry." Oh ! the 
perils and horrors of celebrity ! And then the very persons 
who wish to drown him in an ocean of claret and champagne, 
or suffocate him in a crowd of well dressed people for not one of 
whom does he care a sixpence, are indifferent to the theory of 



INTEODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xxvii 

copyriglit by which he naturally hopes to derive a revenue from 
the sale of his works in America ! It is not to be wondered at 
that he became, day after day, more and more antagonistic to his 
hosts, whether they were aristocratically urbane, or democratic- 
ally ebullient ; that he became spiteful, even wrathful ; and that 
he ended in leaving the country in a sullen mood of discontent, 
and in writing about it in a way which did little credit even to 
his powers of observation, satire, and humor. Indeed we cannot 
point out in his book any passage so funny as a paragraph in 
one of his early letters to Forster, in which he expresses his 
determination to return to England in a sailing vessel. After 
enumerating some of the dangers of an ocean steamer, he says : 
" Add to all this that by day and night she is full of fire and peo- 
ple, that she has no boats, and that the struggling of that enorm- 
ous machinery in a heavy sea seems as though it would rend her 
into fragments — and you may have a pretty con-siderable 
damned good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit nohow ; 
and that it ain't calculated to make you smart, overmuch ; and 
that you don't feel special bright ; and by no means first rate ; 
and not all tonguey (or disposed for conversation) ; and that 
however rowdy you may be by natur', it does use you up 
com-plete, and that's a fact ; and makes you quake considerable, 
and disposed toe damn the engine! — All of which phrases, I 
beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water." 

There can be no doubt that the majority of Dickens's friends 
and enemies, on both sides of the Atlantic, considered the 
" American Notes " a failure. Lord Jeffrey, indeed, who seems 
to have enjoyed books only after he had ceased to review them, 
and who had an intense admiration of Dickens, wrote to him : 
"You have been very tender to our sensitive friends beyond 
sea, and my whole heart goes along with every word you have 
written. I think you have perfectly accomplished all that you 
profess or undertake to do, and that the world has never yet 
seen a more faithful, graphic, amusing, kind-hearted narrative." 
This judgment of an Edinburgh reviewer in his dotage, is in 
curious contrast to the judgment of an Edinburgh reviewer in 



xxviii INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

his prime, namely, the judgment of Macaulay, alread)'^ quoted. 
Dickens wrote to Prof. Felton : " The American book has been 
a most complete and thorough-going success. Four large 
editions have now been sold and paid for, and it has won golden 
opinions from all sorts of men." But the truth was that the 
book satisfied Dickens's great i^ublic of readers in no respect, 
whether judged as a philosophical estimate of American institu- 
tions, or as a humorous reproduction of American manners and 
character. It was shallow, -^ that might be pardoned ; but it 
was dull, — that was unpardonable. The result was that the 
serial story of " Martin Chuzzlewit," which succeeded the 
" American Notes," and which is now rightly considered one of 
the best of his romances, disaj^pointed both author and pub- 
lishers, because it reached a circulation of only twenty or twenty- 
three thousand copies. The first journey of Dickens to the 
United States, in 1842, may be said to have injured him in 
purse and fame ; the second, in 1867-68, increased his fame, 
and put £20,000 into his purse. 

On the 18th of April, 1868, four days before his departure 
from the United States, during his second visit to the country, 
a great dinner was given to him at Delmonico's, in New York. 
At this he made the following speech, — printed here because it 
contains a kind of apology for what he had written on America 
and the Americans : — 

Gentlemen: I cannot do better than take my cue from your dis- 
tinguished President, and refer, in ray first remarks, to his remarks, 
in connection with the old natural associations between you and me. 
When I received an invitation from a private association of working 
members of the Press of New York, to dine with them to-day, I 
accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that 
was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood 
which in spirit I have never quitted. To the wholesome training of 
severe newspaper work when I was a very young man I constantly 
refer my first successes — and, my sons will hereafter testify of theh 
father that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which he 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xxix 

rose. If it were otherwise I should have but a very poor opinion of 
their father, which perhaps — upon the whole — I-have-not. Thus, 
gentlemen, under any circumstances, this company would have been 
exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me; but whereas I sup- 
posed that, like the fairies' pavilion of the " Arabian Nights," it 
would be but a mere handful, and I find it drawn out like the same 
elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the 
more proud am I of the honor of being your guest. For, you will 
readily believe that the more widely representative of the press in 
America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the good will and 
kindly sentiments towards me of that last institution. Gentlemen, 
so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, and I have 
for upwards of four hard winter months so contended against what 
I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was a genuine 
American catarrh — a possession which I have throughout highly 
appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalized by any 
other outward or visible means — I say, gentlemen, so much of my 
voice has lately been heard in the land that 1 might have been con- 
tented not to trouble you any further from my present standing- 
point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not 
only here but on every suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever, 
to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in 
America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity 
and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded I have been by 
the amazing- changes that I have seen around me on everv side. 
Changes moral, changes physical ; changes in the amount of land 
subdued and cultivated; changes in the rise of vast new cities ; 
changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition ; 
changes in the growth of the graces and amenities of life: changes 
in the press — without whose advancement no advancement can take 
place anywhere. !Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose 
that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and 
that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct 
when I was here first. And, gentlemen, this brings me to a point 
on which I have, ever since I landed here last November, observed 
a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it ; and in refer- 
ence to it I will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence 
now. Even the press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or 
misinformed — and I rather think that I have, in one or two rare 
instances, known its information to be not perfectly correct with ref- 



XXX INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

erence to myself. Indeed, I have now and again been more sur- 
prised by printed news that I have read of myself than by any 
printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. 
Thus it appears strange to me to be informed of the vigor and per- 
severance with which I have for some months been " collecting ma- 
terials for and hammering away at a new book on America," seeing 
that all that time it has been perfectly well known to my publishers 
on both sides of the Atlantic, that I positively declared that no con- 
sideration on earth should induce me to write one. But what I have 
intended, what I have resolved upon, and this is the confidence I 
seek to place in you, is that on my return to England, in my own 
English journal, manfully, promptly, plainly in my own person to 
bear for the behalf of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic 
changes in this country as I have hinted at to-night. Also to record 
that wherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the 
largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, 
sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable re- 
spect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avo- 
cation here and the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I 
live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, 
I shall cause to be republished as an appendix to every copy of those 
two books of mine in which I have referred to America. And this 
I will do, and cause to be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, 
but because I regard it as an act of plain justice and honor. Gen- 
tlemen, this transition from my own feelings towards, and interest 
in America, to those of the mass of my countrymen, seems to me 
but a natural one ; whether or not it is so, I make it an express ob- 
ject. I was asked in this very city, about last Christmas time, 
whether an American was not at some disadvantage in England as a 
foreigner? The notion of an American being regarded as a for- 
eigner at all — of his ever being thought of or spoken of in that 
character, was so uncommonly incongruous and absurd to me that 
my gravity was for a moment quite overpowered. As soon as it was 
restored, I said that for years and years past I had hoped I had had 
as many American friends and received as many American visitors 
as almost any Englishman living, and that my unvaried experience, 
fortified by others, was that it was enough in England to be an Ameri- 
can to be received with the most earnest respect and recognition any 
where. Thereupon, out of half a dozen people, suddenly spoke out 
but two. One, an American gentleman of cultivated taste for art, 



INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. xxxi 

who, finding himself on a certain Sunday, outside the wall of a cer- 
tain historical English castle, famous for its pictures, was refused 
admission there according to the strict rules of the place on that day, 
but by merely representing that he was an American gentleman on 
his travels, he had not only the picture-gallery but the whole castle 
placed at his immediate disposal. There was a lady too, being in 
London, and havino; a o-reat desire to see the famous reading-room 
of the British Museum, was assured by the English family with 
which she stayed that it was unfortunately impossible, because the 
place was closed for a week, and she had only three days there. 
Upon that lady's going, as she assured me, alone to the gate — self- 
introduced as an American lady — the gate flew open as if by magic. 
I am unwillingly bound to add that she certainly was young and ex- 
tremely pretty. Still the porter of that institution is of an obese 
habit, and to the best of my observation not very impressible. !N^ow, 
gentlemen, I refer to these trifles as collateral assurance to you that 
the Englishman who shall humbly strive, as I hope to do, to be in 
England as faithful to America as to England herself, has no pre- 
vious conception to contend against. Points of difference there have 
been; points of difference there are; points of difference there prob- 
ably always will be between the two great peoples; but broadcast 
in England is sown the sentiment that these two peoples are essen- 
tially one — and that it rests with them to uphold the great Anglo- 
Saxon race to which our President has referred, and all its great 
achievements throughout the world. If I know anything of my 
countrymen, and they give me the credit of knowing something of 
them, the English heart is stirred by the fluttering of these Stars 
and Stripes, as it is stirred by no other flag that floats, except its 
own. ]f I know my countrymen, in any and every relation towards 
America, they begin, not as Sir Anthony Absolute recommended 
lovers to begin, with a little aversion, but with great liking and a 
profound respect, and whatever may be the sensitiveness of the mo- 
ment, or the little official passion, or the little official policy, now or 
then, or here or there, may be, take my word for it, that the first 
enduring great popular consideration in England is, a generous con- 
struction of justice. Finally, gentlemen, I say this, subject to your 
correction, I do believe that from the great majority of honest minds 
on both sides, there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be 
better for this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, 
or overrun by an iceberg, and abandoned to the arctic fox and bear, 



xxxii INTRODUCTION TO AMERICAN NOTES. 

than that it should present the spectacle of these two great nations, 
each of which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so 
successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against 
the other. Gentlemen, I cannot thank your President enough, and 
you enough, for your kind response to my health, and my poor re- 
marks. But believe me, I do thank you with the utmost fervor of 
which my soul is capable. 



PICTURES FROM ITALY. 



THE EEADEK'S PASSPORT. 



If the readers of this volume will be so kind as to take 
their credentials for the different places which are the subject 
of its author's reminiscences, from the Author himself, perhaps 
they may visit them, in fancy, the more agreeably, and with a 
better understanding of what they are to expect. 

Many books have been written upon Italy, affording many 
means of studying the history of that interesting country, and 
the innumerable associations entwined about it. I make but 
little reference to that stock of information ; not at all regard- 
ing it as a necessary consequence of my having had recourse 
to the storehouse for my own benefit, that I should reproduce 
its easily accessible contents before the eyes of my readers. 

Neither will there be found, in these pages, any grave 
examination, into the government or misgovernment of any 
portion of the country. No visitor of that beautiful land can 
fail to have a strong conviction on the subject ; but as I chose 
when residing there, a Foreigner, to abstain from the discus- 
sion of any such questions with any order of ItaKans, so I 
would rather not enter on the inquiry now. Dirring my twelve 
months' occupation of a house at Genoa, I never found that 
authorities constitutionally jealous, were distrustful of me; 
and I should be sorry to give them occasion to regret their 
free courtesy, either to myself or any of my countrymen. 

There is, probably, not a famous Picture or Statue in all 
Italy, but could be easily buried under a mountain of printed 
paper devoted to dissertations on it. I do not, therefore, 
though an earnest admirer of Painting and Sculpture, expatiate 
at any length on famous Pictures and Statues. 



2 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

This Book is a series of faint reflections — mere shadows ill 
the water — of places to which the imaginations of most people 
are attracted in a greater or less degree, on which mine had 
dwelt for years, and which have some interest for all. The 
greater part of the descriptions were written on the spot, and 
sent home, from time to time, in private letters. I do not 
mention the circumstance as an excuse for any defects they 
may present, for it would be none ; but as a guarantee to the 
Reader that they were at least penned in the fulness of the 
subject, and with the liveliest impressions of novelty and 
freshness. 

If they have ever a fanciful and idle air, perhaps the reader 
will suppose them written in the shade of a Sunny Day, in 
the midst of the objects of which they treat, and will like 
them none the worse for having such influences of the country 
upon them. 

I hope I am not likely to be misunderstood by Professors 
of the Roman Catholic faith, on account of anything contained 
in these pages. I have done my best, in one of my former 
productions, to do justice to them ; and I trust, in this, they 
will do justice to me. When I mention any exhibition that 
impressed me as absurd or disagreeable, I do not seek to con- 
nect it, or recognise it as necessarily connected with, any 
essentials of their creed. When I treat of the ceremonies of 
the Holy Week, I merely treat of their eifect, and do not 
challenge the good and learned Dr. Wiseman's interpretation 
of their meaning. When I hint a dislike of nunneries for 
young girls who abjure the world before they have ever proved 
or known it ; or doubt the ex officio sanctity of all Priests and 
Friars ; I do no more than many conscientious Catholics both 
abroad and at home. 

I have likened these Pictures to shadows in the water, and 
would fain hope that I have, nowhere, stirred the water so 
roughly, as to mar the shadows. I could never desire to be 
on better terms with all my friends than now, when distant 
mountains rise, once more, in my path. For I need not hesi- 
tate to avow, that, bent on correcting a brief mistake I made, 
not long ago, in disturbing the old relations between myself 
and my readers, and departing for a moment from my old 
pursuits, I am about to resume them, joyfully, in Switzerland: 
where, during another year of absence, I can at once work 
out the themes I have now in my mind, without interruption : 



THE READER'S PASSPORT. 3 

and, Tvliile I keep my English, audience within speaking dis- 
tance, extend my knowledge of a noble country, inexpressibly 
attractive to me.* 

This book is made as accessible as possible, because it would 
"be a great pleasure to me if I could hope, through its means, to 
compare impressions with some among the multitudes who 
will hereafter visit the scenes described with interest and 
delight. 

And I have only now, in passport wise, to sketch my reader*s 
portrait, which I hope may be thus supposititiously traced for 
either sex : 

Complexion . • • Fair. 

Eyes , , , • • Very cheerful. 

Nose . • . . Not supercilious. 

Mouth . ♦ » , . Smiling. 

Visage . . , , Beaming. 

General Expression , . . Extremely agreeable. 

* This was written in 1846. 



GOING THROUGH FRANCE. 



On a fine Sunday morning in tlie Midsummer time and 
weather of eighteen hundred and forty-foui', it was, my good 
friend, when — don't be alarmed ; not when two travellers 
might have been observed slowly making their way over that 
picturesque and broken ground by which the first chapter of a 
Middle Aged novel is usually attained — but when an English 
travelling carriage of considerable proportions, fresh from the 
shady halls of the Pantechnicon near Belgrave-square, London, 
was observed (by a very small French soldier ; for I saw him 
Look at it) to issue from the gate of the Hotel Meurice in the 
Rue Rivoli at Paris. 

I am no more bound to explain why the English family 
travelling by this carriage, inside and out, should be starting 
for Italy on a Sunday morning, of all good days in the week, 
than I am to assign a reason for all the little men in France 
being soldiers, and all the big men postilions : which is the 
invariable rule. But, they had some sort of reason for what 
they did, I have no doubt ; aud their reason for being there 
at all, was, as you know, that they were going to live in fair 
Genoa for a year ; and that the head of the family purposed, 
in that space of time, to stroll about, wherever his restless 
humour carried him. 

And it would have been small comfort to me to have 
explained to the population of Paris generally, that I was 
that Head and Chief; and not the radiant embodiment of 
good-humour who sat beside me in the person of a French 
Courier — best of servants and most beaming of men ! Truth 
to say, he looked a great deal more patriarchal than I, who, 
in the shadow of his portly presence, dwindled down to no 
account at all. 

There was, of course, very little in the aspect of Paris — as 
we rattled near the dismal Morgue and over the Pont Neuf — 



DEPARTURE FROM PARIS. 5 

to reproacli us for our Sunday travelling'. The wine-sliops 
(every second liouse) were driving a roaring trade ; awnings 
were spreading, and chairs and tables arranging, outside tlie 
cafes, preparatory to tlie eating of ices, and drinking of cool 
liquids, later in tlie day ; shoe-blacks were busy on the bridges ; 
shops were open ; carts and waggons clattered to and fro ; the 
narrow, up-hill, funnel-like streets across the River, wore so 
many dense perspectives of crowd and bustle, parti-coloured 
night-caps, tobacco-pipes, blouses, large boots, and shaggy 
heads of hair ; nothing at that hour denoted a day of rest, 
unless it were the appearance, here and there, of a family 
pleasure-party, crammed into a bulky old lumbering cab ; or 
of some contemplative holiday maker in the freest and easiest 
dishabille, leaning out of a low garret window, watching the 
drying of his newly polished shoes on the little parapet out- 
side (if a gentleman), or the airing of her stockings in the 
sun (if a lady), with calm anticipation. 

Once clear of the never -to-be-forgotten-or-forgiven pavement 
which surrounds Paris, the first three days of travelling to- 
wards Marseilles are quiet and monotonous enough. To Sens. 
To Avallon. To Chalons. A sketch of one day's proceedings 
is a sketch of all three ; and here it is. 

We have four horses, and one postilion, who has a very 
long whip, and drives his team, something like the Courier of 
Saint Peter sburgh in the circle at Astley's or Franconi's : only 
he sits his own horse instead of standing on him. The 
immense jack-boots worn by these postilions, are sometimes a 
century or two old ; and are so ludicrously disproportionate to 
the wearer's foot, that the spur, which is put where his own 
heel comes, is generally haKway up the leg of the boots. 
The man often comes out of the stable-yard, with his whip in 
his hand and his shoes on, and brings out, in both hands, one 
boot at a time, which he plants on the ground by the side of 
his horse, with great gravity, until everything is ready. 
When it is — and oh Heaven ! the noise they make about it! 
— he gets into the boots, shoes and all, or is hoisted into them 
by a couple of friends ; adjusts the rope-harness, embossed by 
the labours of innumerable pigeons in the stables ; makes all 
the horses kick and plunge ; cracks his whip like a raadman ; 
shouts " En route — Hi ! " and away we go. He is sure to have 
a contest with his horse before we have gone very far ; and then 
he caUs him a Thief, and a Brigand, and a Pig, and what not ; 



6 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and beats him about the head as if he were made of 
wood. 

There is little more than one variety in the appearance of the 
country, for the first two days. From a dreary plain, to an inter- 
minable avenue, and from an interminable avenue, to a dreary 
plain again. Plenty of vines there are, in the open fields, but of 
a short low kind, and not trained in festoons, but about straight 
sticks. Beggars innumerable there are, everywhere ; but an 
extraordinarily scanty population, and fewer children than I 
ever encountered. I don't believe we saw a hundi-ed children 
between Paris and Chalons. Queer old towns, draw-bridged and 
walled : with odd little towers at the angles, like grotesque 
faces, as if the wall had put a mask on, and were staring, down 
into the moat ; other strange little towers, in gardens and fields, 
and down lanes, and in farm-yards : all alone, and always round, 
with a peaked roof, and never used for any purpose at all ; 
ruinous buildings of all sorts : sometimes an hotel de viUe, 
sometimes a guard-house, sometimes a dwelling-house, some- 
times a chateau with a rank garden, prolific in dandelion, and 
watched over by extinguisher-topped turrets, and blink-eyed 
little casements ; are the standard objects, repeated over and 
over again. Sometimes we pass a village inn, with a crumbling 
wall belonging to it, and a perfect town of out-houses : and 
painted over the gateway, "Stabling for Sixty Horses;" as 
indeed there might be stabling for sixty score, were there any 
horses to be stabled there, or anybody resting there, or any- 
thing stirring about the place but a dangling bush, indicative 
of the wine inside : which flutters idly in the wind, in lazy 
keeping with everything else, and certainly is never in a green 
old age, though always so old as to be dropping to pieces. 
And all day long, strange little narrow waggons, in strings of 
six or eight, bringing cheese from Switzerland, and frequently 
in charge, the whole line, of one man or even boy — and he 
very often asleep in the foremost cart — come jingling past : 
the horses drowsily ringing the bells upon their harness, and 
looking as if they thought (no doubt they do) their great blue 
woolly furniture, of immense weight and thickness with a 
pair of grotesque horns growing out of the collar, very much 
too warm for the Midsummer weather. 

Then, there is the Diligence, twice or thrice a-day ; with 
the dusty outsidcs in blue frocks, like butcliers; and the 
insides in white nightcaps ; and its cabriolet head on the roof, 



TO CHALONS. 7 

nodding and shaking, like an idiot's head; and its Yonng- 
France passengers staring out of window, with, beards down to 
their waists, and blue spectacles awfully shading their warlike 
eyes, and very big sticks clenched in their National grasp. 
Also the Malle Poste, with only a couple of passengers, tearing 
along at a real good dare-devil pace, and out of sight in no 
time. Steady old Cures come jolting past, now and then, in 
such ramshackle, rusty, musty, clattering coaches as no 
Englishman would believe in ; and bony women daudle about 
in solitary places, holding cows by ropes while they feed, or 
digging and hoeing, or doing field-work of a more laborious 
kind, or representing real shepherdesses with their flocks — 
to obtain an adequate idea of which pursuit and its followers, 
in any country, it is only necessary to take any pastoral poem, 
or picture, and imagine to yourself whatever is most ex- 
quisitely and widely unlike the descriptions therein contained. 
You have been travelling along, stupidly enough, as you 
generally do in the last stage of the day ; and the ninety-six 
bells upon the horses — twenty-four apiece— have been ringing 
sleepily in your ears for half an hour or so ; and it has become 
a very jog-trot, monotonous, tiresome sort of business ; and 
you have been thinking deeply about the dinner you will have 
at the next stage ; when, down at the end of the long avenue 
of trees through which you are travelling, the first indication 
of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages : 
and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly 
uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, 
and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted 
it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devi] 
were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack-crack. 
Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo ! Hola ! Vite ! Voleur ! 
Brigand ! Hi hi hi ! En r-r-r-r-r-route ! Whip, wheels, 
driver, stones, beggars, children ; crack, crack, crack ; helo ! 
hola! charite pour r amour de Dieu ! crick-crack-crick-crack; 
crick, crick, crick ; bump, jolt, crack, bump, crick-crack ; 
round the comer, up the narrow street, down the paved hill 
on the other side ; in the gutter ; bump, bump ; jolt, jog, 
crick, crick, crick; crack, crack, crack; into the shop-windows 
on the left hand side of the street, preliminary to a sweeping 
turn into the wooden archway on the right ; rumble, rumble, 
rumble ; clatter, clatter, clatter ; crick, crick, crick ; and here 
we are in the yard of the Hotel de TEcu d'Or; used up, gone 



8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

out, smoking, spent, exhausted; but sometimes making a 
false start unexpectedly, with, nothing coming of it — like a 
firework to the last ! 

The landlady of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the 
landlord of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is here ; and the femme 
de chambre of the Hotel de TEcu d'Or is here; and a gen- 
tleman in a glazed cap, with a red beard like a bosom friend, 
who is staying at the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or, is here ; and 
Monsieur le Cure is walking up and down in a corner of the 
yard by himself, with a shovel hat upon his head, and a black 
gown on his back, and a book in one hand, and an umbrella 
in the other ; and everybody, except Monsieur le Cure, is open- 
mouthed and open-eyed, for the opening of the carriage-door. 
The landlord of the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or, dotes to that extent 
upon the Courier, that he can hardly wait for his coming 
do"svn from the box, but embraces his very legs and boot-heels 
as he descends. '' My Courier ! My brave Courier ! My 
friend ! My brother ! " The landlady loves him, the femme 
de chambre blesses him, the garden worships him. The 
Courier asks if his letter has been received ? It has, it has. 
Are the rooms prepared ? They are, they are. The best 
rooms for my noble Courier. The rooms of state for my 
gallant Courier ; the whole house is at the service of my best 
of friends ! He keeps his hand upon the carriage-door, and 
asks some other question to enhance the expectation. He 
carries a green leathern purse outside his coat, suspended by 
a belt. The idlers look at it ; one touches it. It is full of 
five-franc pieces. Murmurs of admiration are heard among 
the boys. The landlord falls upon the Courier's neck, and 
folds him to his breast. He is so much fatter than he was, 
he says ! He looks so rosy and so well ! 

The door is opened. Breathless expectation. The lady of 
the family gets out. Ah sweet lady ! Beautiful lady ! The 
sister of the lady of the family gets out. Great Heaven, 
Ma'amselle is charming ! First little boy gets out. Ah, what 
a beautiful little boy! First little girl gets out. Oh, but 
this is an enchanting child ! Second little girl gets out. Tho 
landlady, yielding to the finest impulse of our common nature, 
catches her up in her arms ! Second little boy gets out. Oh, 
the sweet boy ! Oh, the tender little family ! The baby is 
handed out. Angelic baby ! The baby has topped every- 
thing. All the rapture is expended on the baby ! TJien the 



TO CHALONS. 9 

two rnifses tumble out; and the entliusiasTn swelling into 
madness, tlie whole family are swept up stairs as on a cloud ; 
while the idlers press about the carriage, and look into it, and 
walk round it, and touch it. For it is something to touch a 
carriage that has held so many people. It is a legacy to 
leave one's children. 

The rooms are on the first floor, except the nursery for the 
night, which is a great rambling chamber, with four or five 
beds in it : through a dark passage, up two steps, down four, 
past a pump, across a balcony, and next door to the stable. 
The other sleeping apartments are large and lofty ; each with 
two small bedsteads, tastefully hung, like the windows, with 
red and white drapery. The sitting-room is famous. Dinner 
is already laid in it for three ; and the napkins are foldied in 
cocked-hat fashion. The floors are of red tile. There are no 
carpets, and not much fiu-niture to speak of; but there is 
abundance of looking-glass, and there are large vases under 
glass shades, filled with artificial flowers; and there are 
plenty of clocks. The whole party are in motion. The brave 
Courier, in particular, is everywhere : looking after the beds, 
having wine poured down his throat by his dear brother the 
landlord, and picking up green cucumbers — always cucumbers ; 
Heaven knows where he gets them — with which he walks 
about, one in each hand, like truncheons. 

Dinner is announced. There is very thin soup ; there are 
very large loaves — one apiece ; a fish ; four dishes afterwards ; 
some poultry afterwards ; a dessert afterwards ; and no lack 
of wine. There is not much in the dishes ; but they are 
very good, and always ready instantly. When it is nearly 
dark, the brave Courier, having eaten the two cucumbers, 
sliced up in the contents of a pretty large decanter of oil, 
and another of vinegar, emerges from his retreat below, and 
proposes a visit to the Cathedral, whose massive tower frowns 
down upon the courtj^ard of the inn. Ofl" we go ; and very 
solemn ana grand it is, in the dim light : so dim at last, that 
the polite, old, lanthorn-jawed Sacristan has a feeble little bit 
of candle in his hand, to grope among the tombs "with — and 
looks among the grim columns, very like a lost ghost who is 
searching for his own. 

Underneath the balcony, when we return, the inferior 
servants of the inn are supping in the open air, at a great 
table J the dish a stew of meat and vegetables, smoking hot, 



10 PICTURES FBOM ITALY. ^ 

and served in the iron caldron it was boiled in. Tliey have 
a pitcher of thin wine, and are very merry ; merrier than the 
gentleman with the red beard, who is playing billiards in the 
light room on the left of the yard, where shadows, with cues 
in their hands, and cigars in their mouths, cross and recross 
the window, constantly. Still the thin Cure walks up and 
down alone, with his book and umbrella. And there he walks, 
and there the billiard-balls rattle, long after we are fast 
asleep. 

We are astir at six next morning. It is a delightful day, 
shaming yesterday's mud upon the carriage, if anything 
could shame a carriage, in a land where carriages are never 
cleaned. Everybody is brisk ; and as we finish breakfast, the 
horses come jingling into the yard from the Post-house. 
Everything taken out of the carriage is put back again. The 
brave Courier announces that all is ready, after walking into 
every room, and looking all round it, to be certain that nothing 
is left behind. Everybody gets in. Everybody conDected 
with the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is again enchanted. The brave 
Courier runs into the house for a parcel containing cold fowl, 
sliced ham, bread, and biscuits, for lunch ; hands it into the 
coach ; and runs back again. 

What has he got in his hand now ? ]More cucumbers ? 
No. A long strip of paper. It 's the bill. 

The brave Courier has two belts on, this morning : one 
supporting the purse : another, a mighty good sort of leathern 
bottle, filled to the thi'oat with the best light Bordeaux wine 
in the house. He never pays the bill till this bottle is fuU. 
Then he disputes it. 

He disputes it now, violently. He is still the landlord's 
brother, but by another father or mother. He is not so 
nearly related to him as he was last night. The landlord 
scratches his head. The brave Courier points to certain 
figures in the bill, and intimates that if they remain there, 
the Hotel de I'Ecu d'Or is thenceforth and for ever an hotel 
de I'Ecu de cuivre. The landlord goes into a little counting 
house. The brave Courier follows, forces the bill and a pen 
into his hand, and talks more rapidly than ever. The land- 
lord takes the pen. The Cornier smiles. The landlord makes 
an alteration. The Courier cuts a joke. The landlord is 
afiectionate, but not weakly so. He bears it like a man. 
He shakes hands with his brave brother, but he don't hug him. 



TO CHALONS. 11 

Still, lie loves Ms brotlier; for he knows that lie wiU be 
returning that way, one of these fine days, with another 
family, and he foresees that his heart will yearn towards him 
again. The brave Courier traverses all round the carriage 
once, looks at the drag, inspects the wheels, jumps up, gives 
the word, and away we go ! 

It is market morning. The market is held in the little 
square outside, in front of the cathedral. It is crowded with 
men and women, in blue, in red, in green, in white ; with 
canvassed stalls ; and fluttering merchandise. The country 
people are grouped about, with their clean baskets before 
them. Here, the lace-sellers ; there, the butter and egg - 
sellers; there, the fruit-sellers j there, the shoe -makers. The 
whole place looks as if it were the stage of some great 
theatre, and the curtain had just run up, for a picturesque 
ballet. And there is the cathedral to boot : scene-like : all 
grim, and swarthy, and mouldering, and cold : just splashing 
the pavement in one place with faint purple drops, as the 
morning sun, entering by a little window on the eastern 
side, struggles through some stained glass panes, on the 
western. 

In five minutes we have passed the iron cross, with a little 
ragged kneeling-place of turf before it, in the outskirts of the 
town ; and are again upon the roaxi. 



LYONS, THE RHONE, AND THE GOBLIN OF 

AVIGNON. 



Chalons is a fair resting-place, in right of its good inn on 
the bank of the river, and the little steam-boats, gay with 
green and red paint, that come and go upon it : which make 
up a pleasant and refreshing scene, after the dusty roads. 
But, unless you would like to dwell on an enormous plain, 
with jagged rows of irregular poplars on it, that look in the 
distance like so many combs with broken teeth : and unless 
you would like to pass your life without the possibility of 
going up-hill, or going up anything but stairs : you would 
hardly approve of Chalons as a place of residence. 

You would probably like it better, however, than Lyons : 
which you may reach, if you will, in one of the before- 
mentioned steam-boats, in eight hours. 

What a city Lyons is ! Talk about people feeling, at 
certain unlucky times, as if they had tumbled from the clouds I 
Here is a whole town that has tumbled, anyhow, out of the 
sky; having been first caught up, like other stones that 
tumble down from that region, out of fens and barren places, 
dismal to behold ! The two great streets through which the 
two great rivers dash, and all the little streets whose name is 
Legion, were scorching, blistering, and sweltering. The 
houses, high and vast, dirty to excess, rotten as old cheeses, 
and as thickly peopled. All up the hills that hem the city 
in, these houses swarm ; and the mites inside were lolling out 
of the windows, and diying their ragged clothes on poles, and 
crawling in and out at the doors, and coming out to pant and 
gasp upon the pavement, and creeping in and out among 
huge piles and bales of fusty, musty, stifling goods ; and 
li\*ing, or rather not dying till their time should come, in an 
exhausted receiver. Every manufacturing to\Mi, melted into 
one, would hardly convoy an impression of Lyons as it 



LYONS. ^^ 

presented itself to me : for all the undrained, unscavengered, 
qualities of a foreign town, seemed grafted, there, upon the 
native miseries of a manufacturing one; and it bears such 
fruit as I would go some miles out of my way to avoid 
encountering again. 

In the cool of the evening : or rather in the faded heat of 
the day : we went to see the Cathedral, where divers old 
women, and a few dogs, were engaged in contemplation. 
There was no difference, in point of cleanliness, between its 
stone pavement and that of the streets ; and there was a wax 
saint, in a little box like a berth aboard ship, with a glass 
front to it, whom Madame Tussaud would have nothing to 
say to, on any terms, and which even Westminster Abbey 
might be ashamed of. If you would know all about the 
architecture of this church, or any other, its dates, dimensions, 
endowments, and history, is it not written in Mr. Murray's 
Guide-Book, and may you not read it there, with thanks to 
him, as I did ! 

For this reason, I should abstain from mentioning the 
curious clock in Lyons Cathedral, if it were not for a small 
mistake I made, in connection with that piece of mechanism. 
The keeper of the church was very anxious it should be 
shown; partly for the honor of the establishment and the 
town; and partly, perhaps, because of his deriving a per- 
centage from the additional consideration. However that 
may be, it was set in motion, and thereupon a host of little 
doors flew open, and innumerable little figures staggered out 
of them, and jerked themselves back again, with that special 
unsteadiness of purpose, and hitching in the gait, which 
usually attaches to figures that are moved by clock-work. 
Meanwhile, the Sacristan stood explaining these wonders, and 
pointing them out, severally, with a wand. There was a 
centre puppet of the Virgin Mary ; and close to her, a small 
pigeon-hole, out of which another and a very ill-looking 
puppet made one of the most sudden plunges I ever saw 
accomplished : instantly flopping back again at sight of her, 
and banging his little door, violently, after him. Taking 
this to be emblematic of the victory over Sin and Death, and 
not at all unwilling to show that I perfectly understood the 
subject, in anticipation of the showman, I rashly said, '' Aha ! 
The Evil Spirit. To be sure. He is very soon disposed of." 
" Pardon Monsieur," said the Sacristan, with a polite motion 



14 PICTUIIES FROM ITALY. 

of his hand towards the little door, as if introducing some- 
body—'' The Angel Gabriel ! " 

Soon after day-break next morning, we ■were steaming 
down the Arrowy Rhone, at the rate of twenty miles an hour, 
in a very dirty vessel full of merchandise, and with only three 
or four other passengers for our companions : among whom, 
the most remarkable was a siUy, old, meek-faced, garlic- 
eating, immeasurably-polite Chevalier, with a dirty scrap of 
red ribbon hanging at his button-hole, as if he had tied it 
there, to remind himself of something : as Tom Noddy, in the 
farce, ties knots in his pocket-handkerchief. 

For the last two days, we had seen great sullen hills, the 
first indications of the Alps, lowering in the distance. Now, 
we were rushing on beside them : sometimes close beside 
them : sometimes with an intervening slope, covered with 
vineyards. Villages and small towns hanging in mid-air, 
with great woods of olives seen through the light open towers 
of their churches, and clouds moving slowly on, upon the 
steep acclivity behind them ; ruined castles perched on every 
eminence ; and scattered houses in the clefts and gullies of the 
hills ; made it very beautiful. The gi-eat height of these, 
too, making the buildings look so tiny, that they had all the 
charm of elegant models ; their excessive whiteness, as con- 
trasted with the brown rocks, or the sombre, deep, dull, heavy 
green of the olive-tree ; and the puny size, and little slow 
walk of the Lilliputian men and women on the bank ; made a 
charming picture. There were ferries out of number, too ; 
bridges ; tha famous Pont d' Esprit, -^dth I don't know how 
many arches ; towns where memorable wines are made ; 
Vallence, where Napoleon studied ; and the noble river, 
bringing at every winding turn, new beauties into view. 

There lay before us, that same afternoon, the broken bridge 
of Avignon, and all the city baking in the sun ; yet with an 
under-done-pie-crust, battlemented wall, that never will be 
brown, though it bake for centuries. 

The grapes were hanging in clusters in the streets, and the 
brilliant Oleander was in full bloom everywhere. The streets 
are old and very narrow, but tolerably clean, and shaded by 
awnings stretched from house to house. Bright stuffs and 
handkerchiefs, curiosities, ancient fi-ames of carved wood, old 
chairs, ghostly tables, saints, virgins, angels, and staring 
daubs of portraits, being exposed for sale beneath, it was very 



AVIGNON. 15 

quaint and lively. All this was much set off, too, by the 
glimpses one caught, through a rusty gate standing ajar, of 
quiet sleepy courtyards, having stately old houses within, as 
silent as tombs. It was all very like one of the descriptions 
in the Arabian Nights. The three one-eyed Calenders might 
have knocked at any one of those doors till the street rang 
again, and the porter who persisted in asking questions — the 
man who had the delicious purchases put into his basket in 
the morning — might have opened it quite naturally. 

After breakfast next morning, we sallied forth to see the 
lions. Such a . delicious breeze was blowing in, from the 
north, as made the walk delightful : though the pavement- 
stones, and stones of the walls and houses, were far too hot to 
have a hand laid on them comfortably. 

We went, first of all, up a rocky height, to the cathedral : 
where Mass was performing to an auditory very like that of 
Lyons, namely, several old women, a baby, and a very self- 
possessed dog, who had marked out for himself a little course 
or platform for exercise, beginning at the altar-rails and 
ending at the door, up and down which constitutional walk 
he trotted, during the service, as methodically and calmly, as 
any old gentleman out of doors. It is a bare old church, and 
the paintings in the roof are sadly defaced by time and damp 
weather ; but the sun was shining in, splendidly, through the 
red curtains of the windows, and glittering on the altar 
furniture ; and it looked as bright and cheerful as need be. 

Going apart, in this Church, to see some painting which 
was being executed in fresco by a French artist and his pupil, 
I was led to observe more closely than I might otherwise 
have done, a great number of votive offerings with which the 
walls of the different chapels were profusely hung. I will 
not say decorated, for they were very roughly and comically 
got up : most likely by poor sign-painters, who eke out their 
living in that way. They were all little pictui-es : each 
representing some sickness or calamity from which the person 
placing it there, had escaped, through the interposition of his 
or her patron saint, or of the Madonna ; and I may refer to 
them as good specimens of the class generally. They are 
abundant in Italy. 

In a grotesque squareness of outline, and impossibility of 
perspective, they were not unlike the woodcuts in old books ; 
but they were oil-paintings, and the artist, like the painter of 



16 PICTCJRES FROM ITALY. 

the Primrose family, had not been sparing of his colours. 
In one, a lady was having a toe amputated — an operation 
which a saintly personage had sailed into the room, upon a 
cloud, to superintend. In another, a lady was lying in bed, 
tucked up very tight and prim, and staring with much 
composure at a tripod, with a slop-basin on it : the usual 
form of washing-stand, and the only piece of fiu'niture, besides 
the bedstead, in her chamber. One would never have 
supposed her to be labouring under any complaint, beyond 
the inconvenience of being miraculously wide awake, if the 
painter had not hit upon the idea of putting all her family on 
their knees in one corner, with their legs sticking out behind 
them on the floor, like boot-trees. Above whom, the Virgin, 
on a kind of blue divan, promised to restore the patient. In 
another case, a lady was in the very act of being run over, 
immediately outside the city walls, by a sort of piano-forte 
van. But the Madonna was there again. Whether the 
supernatural appearance had startled the horse (a bay griifin), 
or whether it was invisible to him, I don't know ; but he 
was galloping away, ding-dong, without the smallest reverence 
or compunction. On every picture " Ex voto " was painted 
in yellow capitals in the sky. 

Though votive offerings were not unknown in Pagan 
Temples, and are evidently among the many compromises 
made between the false religion and the true, when the true 
was in its infancy, I could wish that all the other compromises 
were as harmless. Gratitude and Devotion are Christian 
qualities ; and a grateful, humble, Christian spirit may dictate 
the observance. 

Hard by the cathedral, stands the ancient Palace of the 
Popes, of which one portion is now a common jail, and 
another a noisy barrack : while gloomy suites of state apart- 
ments, shut up and deserted, mock their own old state and 
glory, like the embalmed bodies of kings. But we neither 
went there, to see state-rooms, nor soldiers' quarters, nor a 
common jail, though we dropped some money into a prisoners' 
box outside, whilst the prisoners, themselves, looked through 
the iron bars, high up, and watched us eagerly. We went to 
see the ruins of the dreadful rooms in which the Inquisition 
used to sit. 

A little, old, swarthy woman, with a pair of flashing black 
eyes, — proof that the world hadn't conjui-ed down the devil 



AVIGNON. 17 

witMn her, thougli it had had between sixty and seventy years 
to do it in, — came out of the Barrack Cabaret, of which sbe 
was the keeper, with some large keys in her hands, and 
marshalled us the way that we should go. How she told us, 
on the way, that she was a Government Officer (concierge du 
palais apostoUque), and had been, for I don't know how many 
years ; and how she had shown these dungeons to princes ; 
and how she was the best of dungeon demonstrators ; and 
how she had resided in the palace from an infant, — had been 
born there, if I recollect right, — I needn't relate. But such 
a fierce, little, rapid, sparkling, energetic she-devil I never 
beheld. She was alight and flaming, all the time. Her action 
was violent in the extreme. She never spoke, without stopping 
expressly for the purpose. She stamped her feet, clutched us 
by the arms, flung herself into attitudes, hammered against 
walls with her keys, for mere emphasis : now whispered as if 
the Inquisition were there still : now shrieked as if she were 
on the rack herself; and had a mysterious, hag-b'ke way with 
her forefinger, when approaching the remains of some new 
horror — looking back and walking stealthily, and making 
horrible grimaces — that might alone have qualified her to 
walk up and down a sick man's counterpane, to the exclusion 
of all other figures, through a whole fever. 

Passing through the court-yard, among groups of idle 
soldiers, we turned off by a gate, which this She- Goblin 
unlocked for our admission, and locked again behind us : and 
entered a narrow court, rendered narrower by fallen stones 
and heaps of rubbish ; part of it choking up the mouth of a 
ruined subterranean passage, that once communicated (or is 
said to have done so) with another castle on the opposite bank 
of the river. Close to this court -yard, is a dungeon — we 
stood within it, in another minute — in the dismal tower des 
oubliettes, where Rienzi was imprisoned, fastened by an iron 
chain to the very wall that stands there now, but shut out 
from the sky which now looks down into it. A few steps 
brought us to the Cachets, in which the prisoners of the 
Inquisition were confined for forty-eight hours after their 
capture, without food or drink, that their constancy might be 
shaken, even before they were confronted with their gloomy 
judges. The day has not got in there yet. They are still 
small cells, shut in by four unyielding, close, hard walls ; still 
profoundly dark ; stilL massively doored and fastened, as of old. 



18 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

Goblin, looking back as I have described, went softly on, 
into a vaulted cliamber, now used as a store-room : once the 
chapel of the Holy Office. The place where the tribunal sat, 
was plain. The platform might have been removed but 
yesterday. Conceive the parable of the Good Samaritan 
ha^HLng been painted on the wall of one of these Inquisition 
chambers ! But it was, and may be traced there yet. 

High up in the jealous wall, are niches where the faltering 
replies of the accused were heard and noted down. ^lany of 
them had been brought out of the very cell we had just looked 
into, so awfully; along the same stone passage. We had 
trodden in their very footsteps. 

I am gazing round me, with the horror that the place 
inspires, when Goblin clutches me by the wrist, and lays, not 
her skinny finger, but the handle of a key, upon her lip. 
She invites me, with a jerk, to follow her. I do so. She 
leads me out into a room adjoining — a rugged room, with a 
funnel-shaped, contracting roof, open at the top, to the bright 
day. I ask her what it is. She folds her arms, leers 
hideously, and stares. I ask again. She glances round, to 
see that all the Kttle company are there ; sits down upon a 
mound of stones ; throws up her arms, and yells out, like a 
fiend, '^ La Salle de la Question ! " 

The Chamber of Torture ! And the roof was made of that 
shape to stifle the victim's cries ! Oh Goblin, Goblin, let us 
think of this awhile, in silence. Peace, Goblin I Sit with 
your short arms crossed on your short legs, upon that heap of 
stones, for only five minutes, and then flame out again. 

Minutes ! Seconds are not marked upon the Palace clock, 
when, with her eyes flasliing- fire, Goblin is up, in the middle 
of the chamber, describing, with her sunburnt arms, a wheel 
of heavy blows. Thus it ran round ! cries Goblin. ^Mash, 
mash, mash I An endless routine of heavy hammers. Mash, 
mash, mash ! upon the sufierer's limbs. See the stone trough I 
says Goblin. For the water torture ! Gurgle, swill, bloat, 
burst, for the Redeemer's honour ! Suck the bloody rag, deep 
down into your unbelieving body, Heretic, at every breath you 
draw ! And when the executioner plucks it out, reeking with 
the smaller mysteries of God's o^ti Image, know us for His 
chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, 
elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal : 
who never sti'uck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, 



AVIGNON. 19 

dumbness, madness, any one affliction of manliind; and 
never stretched His blessed liand out, but to give relief 
and ease ! 

See ! cries Goblin. There the furnace was. There they 
m.ade the irons red-hot. Those holes supported the sharp 
stake, on which the tortured persons hujig poised : dangling 
with their whole weight from the roof. ■' But;" and Goblin 
whispers this ; " Monsieur has heard of this tower ? Yes ? 
Let Monsieur look down, then ! " 

A cold air, laden with an earthy smell, falls upon the face 
of Monsieur ; for she has opened, while speaking, a trap-door 
in the wall. Monsieur looks in. Downward to the bottom, 
upward to the top, of a steep, dark, lofty tower : very dismal, 
very dark, very cold. The Executioner of the Inquisition, 
says Goblin, edging in her head to look down also, flung 
those who were past aU further torturing, down here. " But 
look ! does Monsieur see the black stains on the wall ? " A 
glance, over his shoulder, at Goblin's keen eye, shows 
Monsieur — and would without the aid of the directing-key — 
where they are. " What are they ? " '' Blood ! " 

In October, 1791, when the Revolution was at its height 
here, sixty persons : men and women {" and priests," says 
Goblin, /'priests"): were murdered, and hurled, the djdng 
and the dead, into this dreadful pit, where a quantity of 
quick-lime was tumbled down upon their bodies. Those 
ghastly tokens of the massacre were soon no more ; but while 
one stone of the strong building in which the deed was done, 
remains upon another, there they will lie in the memories of 
men, as plain to see as the splashing of their blood upon the 
wall is now. 

Was it a portion of the great scheme of Retribution, that 
the cruel deed should be committed in this place ! That a 
part of the atrocities and monstrous institutions, which had 
been, for scores of years, at work, to change men's nature, 
should in its last service, tempt them with the ready means of 
gratifying their furious and beastly rage ! Should enable 
them to show themselves, in the height of their frenzy, no 
worse than o. great, solemn, legal establishment, in the height 
of its power ! No worse ! Much better. They used the 
Tower of the Forgotten, in the name of Liberty — their 
liberty ; an earth-born creature, nursed in the black mud of 
the Bastile moats and dungeons, and necessarily betraying 

02 



20 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

many evidences of its unwholesome brin^ing-up — ^but the 
Inquisition used it in the name of Heaven. 

Goblin's finger is lifted ; and she steals out again, into the 
Chapel of the Holy Office. She stops at a certain part of the 
flooring. Her great effect is at hand. She waits for the rest. 
She darts at the brave Courier, who is explaining something ; 
hits him a sounding rap on the hat with the largest key ; and 
bids him be silent. She assembles us all, round a little trap- 
door in the floor, as round a grave. *'Voila!" she darts 
down at the ring, and flings the door open with a crash, in 
her goblin energy, though it is no light weight. '' Voila les 
oubliettes ! Voila les oubliettes ! Subterranean ! Frightful ! 
Black ! Terrible ! Deadly ! Les oubliettes de I'lnquisition ! " 

My blood ran cold, as I looked from Goblin, down into the 
vaults, where these forgotten creatures, with recollections of 
the world outside : of Vt^ives, friends, childi-en, brothers : 
starved to death, and made the stones ring with their 
unavailing groans. But, the thrill I felt on seeing the 
accursed wall below, decayed and broken through, and the 
sun shining in through its gaping wounds, was like a sense of 
victory and triumph. I felt exalted with the proud delight of 
living, in these degenerate times, to see it. As if I were the 
hero of some high achievement ! The light in the doleful 
vaults was typical of the light that has streamed in, on all 
persecution in God's name, but which is not yet at its noon ! 
It cannot look more lovely to a blind man newly restored to 
sight, than to a traveller who sees it, calmly and majesticaUj, 
treading down the darkness of that Infernal WelL 



AVIGNON TO GENOA, 



Goblin, having sliown les oubliettes, felt tliat lier great coup 
was struck. She let the door fall with, a crash, and stood 
upon it with her arms a-kimbo, sniffing prodigiously. 

When we left the place, I accompanied her into her house, 
under the outer gateway of the fortress, to buy a little history 
of the building. Her cabaret, a dark low room, lighted by 
small windows, sunk in the thick wall — in the softened light, 
and with its forge-like chimney ; its little counter by the door, 
with bottles, jars, and glasses on it ; its household implements 
and scraps of dress against the wall ; and a sober-looking 
woman (she must have a congenial life of it, with Goblin,) 
knitting at the door — looked exactly like a picture by 

OSTADE. 

I walked round the building on the outside, in a sort of 
dream, and yet with the delightful sense of having awakened 
from it, of which the light, down in the vaults, had given me 
the assurance. The immense thickness and giddy height of 
the walls, the enormous strength of the massive towers, the 
great extent of the building, its gigantic proportions, frowning 
aspect, and barbarous irregularity, awaken awe and wonder. 
The recollection of its opposite old uses : an impregnable 
fortress, a luxurious palace, a horrible prison, a place of 
torture, the court of the Inquisition : at one and the same 
time, a house of feasting, fighting, religion, and blood : gives 
to every stone in its huge form a fearful interest, and imparts 
new meaning to its incongruities. I could think of little, 
however, then, or long afterwards, but the sun in the dungeons. 
The palace coming down to be the lounging -place of noisy 
soldiers, and being forced to echo their rough talk, and 
common oaths, and to have their garments fluttering from its 
dirty windows, was some reduction of its state, and something 
to rejoice at ; but the day in its cells, and the sky for the loof 



22 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

of its chambers of cruelty — that was its desolation and defeat ! 
If I had seen it in a blaze from ditch to rampart, I should 
have felt that not that light, nor all the light in all the fire 
that bums, could waste it, like the sunbeams in its secret 
council-chamber, and its prisons. 

Before I quit this Palace of the Popes, let me translate from 
the little history I mentioned just now, a short anecdote, quite 
appropriate to itself, connected with its adventures. 

''An ancient tradition relates, that in 1441, a nephew of 
Pierre de Lude, the Pope's legate, seriously insulted some 
distinguished ladies of Avignon, whose relations, in revenge, 
seized the young man, and horribly mutilated him. For 
several years the legate kept his revenge within his own 
breast, but he was not the less resolved upon its gratification 
at last. He even made, in the fulness of time, advances 
towards a complete reconciliation ; and when their apparent 
sincerity had prevailed, he invited to a splendid banquet, in 
this palace, certain families, whole families, whom he sought 
to exterminate. The utmost gaiety animated the repast ; but 
the measures of the legate were well taken. When the 
dessert was on the board, a Swiss presented himself, with the 
announcement that a strange ambassador solicited an extra- 
ordinary audience. The legate, excusing himself, for the 
moment, to his guests, retired, followed by his officers. 
Within a few moments afterwards, five hundred persons were 
reduced to ashes : the whole of that wing of the building 
having been blown into the air with a terrible explosion ! " 

After seeing the churches (I will not trouble j^ou with 
churches just now), we left Avignon that afternoon. The heat 
being very great, the roads outside the walls were strewn 
with people fast asleep in every little slip of shade, and with 
lazy gTOups, half asleep and half awake, who were waiting 
until the sun should be low enough to admit of their playing 
bowls among the burnt-up trees, and on the dusty road. 
The harvest here, was already gathered in, and mules and 
horses were treading out the corn in the fields. We came, at 
dusk, upon a wild and hilly coimtry, once famous for brigands : 
and travelled slowly up a steep ascent. So we went on, until 
eleven at night, when we halted at the town of Aix (within 
two .stages of Marseilles) to sleep. 

The hotel, with all the bhnds and shutters closed to keep 
the light and heat out, was comfortable and airy next morning, 



MARSEILLES. 23 

and tlie town was very clean ; but so hot, and so intensely 
light, that when I walked out at noon it was like coming" 
suddenly from the darkened room into crisp blue fire. The 
air was so very clear, that distant hills and rocky points 
appeared within an hour's walk : while the town immediately 
at hand — with a kind of blue wind between me and it — - 
seemed to be white hot, and to^ be throwing off a fiery air 
from its surface. 

We left this town towards evening, and took the road to 
Marseilles. A dusty road it was ; the houses shut up close ; 
and the vines powdered white. At nearly all the cottage 
doors, women were peeling and slicing onions into earthen 
bowls for supper. So they had been doing last night all the 
way from Avignon. We passed one or two shady dark 
chateaux, surrounded by trees, and embellished with cool 
basins of water : which were the more refreshing to behold, 
from the great scarcity of such residences on the road we had 
travelled. As we approached Marseilles, the road began to 
be covered with holiday people. Outside the public-houses 
were parties smoking, drinking, playing di'aughts and cards, 
and (once) dancing. But dust, dust, dust, everywhere. We 
went on, through a long, straggling, dirty suburb, thronged 
with people; having on our left a di*eary slope of land, on 
which the country-houses of the Marseilles merchants, always 
staring white, are jumbled and heaped without the slightest 
order : backs, fronts, sides, and gables towards all points of 
the compass ; until, at last, we entered the town. 

I was there, twice or thrice afterwards, in fair weather and 
foul ; and I am afraid there is no doubt that it is a dirty 
and disagreeable place. But the prospect, from the fortified 
heights, of the beautiful Mediterranean, with its lovely rocks 
and islands, is most delightful. These heights are a desirable 
retreat, for less picturesque reasons — as an escape from a com- 
pound of vile smells perpetually arising from a great harbour 
full of stagnant water, and befouled by the refuse of innu- 
merable ships with all sorts of cargoes : which, in hot weather, 
is dreadful in the last degree. 

There were foreign sailors, of all nations, in the streets ; 
with red shirts, blue shirts, buff shirts, tawny shirts, and 
shirts of orange colour ; with red caps, blue caps, green caps, 
great beards, and no beards; in Turkish turbans, glazed 
English hats, and Neapolitan head-dresses. There were the 



24 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

townspeople sitting in clusters on the pavement, or airing 
themselves on the tops of their houses, or walking up and 
down the closest and least airy of Boulevards ; and there were 
crowds of fierce-looking people of the lower sort, blocking up 
the way, constantly. In the very heart of all this stir and 
uproar, was the common madhouse ; a low, contracted, 
miserable building, looking straight upon the street, without 
the smallest screen or court-yard ; where chattering madmen 
and mad- women were peeping out, through rusty bars, at the 
staring faces below, while the sun, darting fiercely aslant into 
their little cells, seemed to dry up their brains, and worry 
them, as if they were baited by a pack of dogs. 

We were pretty well accommodated at the Hotel dii 
Paradis, situated in a narrow street of very high houses, 
with a hairdresser's shop opposite, exhibiting in one of its 
windows two full-length waxen ladies, twirling round and 
round : which so enchanted the hairdresser himself, that he 
and his family sat in arm-chairs, and in cool undresses, on 
the pavement outside, enjoying the gratification of the 
passers-by, with lazy dignity. The family had retired to 
rest when we went to bed, at midnight ; but the hairdresser 
(a corpulent man, in drab slippers) was still sitting there, 
with his legs stretched out before him, and evidently couldn't 
bear to have the shutters put up. 

Next day we went down to the harbour, where the sailors 
of all nations were discharging and taking in cargoes of all 
kinds : fruits, wines, oils, silks, stuffs, velvets, and every 
manner of merchandise. Taking one of a great number of 
lively little boats with gay-striped awnings, we rowed away, 
under the sterns of great ships, under tow-ropes and cables, 
against and among other boats, and very much too near the 
sides of vessels that were faint with oranges, to the Marie 
Antoinette, a, handsome steamer bound for Genoa, lying near 
the mouth of the harbour. By-and-by, the carriage, that 
unwieldy "trifle from the Pantechnicon," on a flat barge, 
bumping against everything, and giving occasion for a prodi- 
gious quantity of oaths and grimaces, came stupidly alongside; 
and by five o'clock we were steaming out in the open sea. 
The vessel was beautifully clean ; the meals were served under 
an a-^Tiing on deck ; the night was calm and clear ; the quiet 
beauty of the sea and sky unspeakable. 

We were off Nice, eaiiy next morning, and coasted along, 



GENOA. 25 

witliin a few miles of the Cornice road (of wliich. more in its 
place) nearly all day. We could see Genoa before three ; and 
watching it as it gradually developed its splendid amphitheatre, 
terrace rising above terrace, garden above garden, palace above 
palace, height upon height, vp^as ample occupation for us, 
till we ran into the stately harbour. Having been duly 
astonished, here, by the sight of a few Cappucini monks, who 
were watching the fair-weighing of some wood upon the 
wharf, we drove off to Albaro, two miles distant, where we 
had engaged a house. 

The way lay through the main streets, but not through the 
Strada Nuova, or the Stradi Balbi, which are the famous 
streets of palaces. I never, in my life, was so dismayed ! 
The wonderful novelty of everything, the unusual smells, the 
unaccountable jBlth (though it is reckoned the cleanest of 
Italian towns), the disorderly jumbling of dirty houses, one 
upon the roof of another; the passages more squalid and 
more close than any in Saint Giles's, or old Paris; in and out 
of which, not vagabonds, but well-dressed women, with white 
veils and great fans, were passing and repassing ; the perfect 
absence of resemblance in any dwelling-house, or shop, or wall, 
or post, or pillar, to anything one had ever seen before ; and the 
disheartening dirt, discomfort, and decay ; perfectly confounded 
m.e. I fell into a dismal reverie. I am conscious of a feverish 
and bewildered vision of saints and virgins' shrines at the 
street corners — of great numbers of friars, monks, and soldiers 
— of vast red curtains, waving in the door- ways of the churches 
— of always going up hill, and yet seeing every other street 
and passage going higher up — of fruit-stalls, with fresh 
lemons and oranges hanging in garlands made of vine-leaves 
— of a guard-house, and a draw-bridge — and some gateways 
— and vendors of iced water, sitting with little trays upon 
the margin of the kennel — and this is all the consciousness 
I had, until I was set down in a rank, dull, weedy court-yard, 
attached to a kind of pink jail ; and was told I lived there. 

I little thought, that day, that I should ever come to have 
an attachment for the very stones in the streets of Genoa, and 
to look back upon the city with affection as connected with 
many hours of happiness and quiet ! But these are my first 
impressions honestly set down ; and how they changed, I will 
set down too. At present, let us breathe after tliis long- 
winded journey. 



GENOA AND ITS - NEIGHBOURHOOD. 



The first impressions of sucli a place as Albako, the suburb 
of Genoa "where I am now, as my American friends would 
say, '' located," can hardly fail, I should imagine, to be 
mournful and disappointing. It requires a little time and 
use to overcome the feeling of depression consequent, at first, 
on so much ruin and neglect. Novelty, pleasant to most 
people, is particularly delightful, I think, to me. I am not 
easily dispirited when I have the means of pursuing my own 
fancies and occupations ; and I believe I have some natural 
aptitude for accommodating myself to circumstances. But, 
as yet, I stroll about here, in all the holes and corners of the 
neighbourhood, in a perpetual state of forlorn surprise ; and 
returning to my villa ; the Villa Bagnerello ; (it sounds 
romantic, but Signer Bagnerello is a butcher hard by), have 
sufficient occupation in pondering over my new experiences, 
and comparing them, very much to my own amusement, with 
my expectations, until I wander out again. 

The Villa Bagnerello : or the Pink Jail, a far more expres- 
sive name for the mansion : is in one of the most splendid 
situations imaginable. The noble bay of Genoa, with the 
deep blue Mediterranean, lie stretched out near at hand ; 
monstrous old desolate houses and palaces are dotted all about ; 
lofty hills, with their tops often hidden in the clouds, and 
with strong forts perched high up on their craggy sides, are 
close upon the left ; and in front, stretching from the walls of 
the house, down to a ruined chapel which stands upon the 
bold and picturesque rocks on the sea-shore, are green vine- 
yards, where you may wander all day long in partial shade, 
through interminable vistas of grapes, trained on a rough 
trellis-work across the narrow paths. 

This sequestered spot is approached by lanes so very narrow, 
that when we arrived at the Custom-house, we found the people 



GENOA. 27 

here, had tei^e7i the measure of the narrowest among them, and 
were waiting to apply it to the carriage ; which ceremony was 
gravely performed in the street, while we all stood by, in 
breathless suspense. It was found to be a very tight fit, but 
just a possibility, and no more — as I am reminded every 
d*ay, by the sight of various large holes which it punched 
in the walls on either side as it came along. We are 
more fortunate, I am told, than an . old lady who took a 
house in these parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in her 
carriage in a lane ; and as it was impossible to open one 
of the doors, she was obliged to submit to the indignity of 
being hauled through one of the little front windows, like 
a harlequin. 

When you have got through these narrow lanes, you come 
to an archway, imperfectly stopped up by a rusty old gate — 
my gate. The rusty old gate has a bell to correspond, which 
you ring as long as you like, and which nobody answers, as it 
has no connection whatever with the house. But there is a 
rusty old knocker, too — very loose, so that it slides round 
when you touch it — and if you learn the trick of it, and 
knock long enough, somebody conies. The Brave Courier 
comes, and gives you admittance. You walk into a seedy 
little garden, all wild and weedy, from which the vineyard 
opens ; cross it, enter a square hall like a cellar, walk up a 
cracked marble staircase, and pass into a most enormous 
room with a vaulted roof and whitewashed walls : not unlike 
a great methodist chapel. This is the sala. It has five 
windows and five doors, and is decorated with pictures which 
would gladden the heart of one of those picture-cleaners in 
London who hang up, as a sign, a picture divided, like death 
and the lady, at the top of the old ballad : which always 
leaves you in a state of uncertainty whether the ingenious 
professor has cleaned one half or dirtied the other. The 
furniture of this sala is a sort of red brocade. All the chairs 
are immovable, and the sofa weighs several tons. 

On the same floor, and opening out of this same chamber, 
are dining-room, drawing-room, and divers bed-rooms : each 
with a multiplicity of doors and windows. Up- stairs are 
divers other gaunt chambers, and a kitchen ; and down-stairs 
is another kitchen, which, with all sorts of strange contri- 
vances for bui'ning charcoal, looks like an alchemical 
laboratory. There are also some half-dozen small sitting- 



28 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

rooms, where the servants, in this hot July, may escape from 
the heat of the fire, and where the Brave Courier plays all sortg 
of musical instruments of his own manufacture, all the even- 
ing long. A mighty old, wandering, ghostly, echoing, grim, 
bare house it is, as ever I beheld or thought of. 

There is a little vine-covered terrace, opening from the 
drawing-room ; and under this terrace, and forming one side 
of the little garden, is what used to be the stable. It is now 
a cow-house, and has three cows in it, so that we get new 
milk by the bucket-full. There is no pasturage near, and 
they never go out, but are constantly lying down, and surfeit- 
ing themselves with vine-leaves — perfect Italian cows — 
enjoying the dolce far niente all day long. They are presided 
over, and slept with, by an old man named Antonio, and his 
son ; two burnt-sienna natives with naked legs and feet, who 
wear, each, a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a red sash, with a 
relic, or some sacred charm like a bonbon off a twelfth cake, 
hanging round the neck. The old man is very anxious to 
convert me to the Catholic Faith ; and exhorts me frequently. 
We sit upon a stone by the door, sometimes, in the evening, 
like Robinson Crusoe and Friday reversed ; and he generally 
relates, towards my conversion, an abridgment of the History 
of Saint Peter — chiefly, I believe, from the imspeakable 
delight he has in his imitation of the cock. 

The view, as I have said, is charming ; but in the day you 
must keep the lattice-blinds close shut, or the sun would drive 
you mad ; and when the sun goes down, you must shut up 
all the windows, or the mosquitoes would tempt you to commit 
suicide. So at this time of the year, you don't see much of 
the prospect within doors. As for the flies, you don't mind 
them. Nor the fleas, whose size is prodigious, and whose 
name is Legion, and who populate the coach-house to that 
extent that I daily expect to see the carriage going off bodily, 
drawn by myriads of industrious fleas in harness. The rats 
are kept away, quite comfortably, by scores of lean cats, who 
roam about the garden for that purpose. The lizards, of 
course, nobody cares for ; they play in the sun, and don't bite. 
The little scorpions are merely curious. The beetles are 
rather late, and have not appeared yet. Tlio frogs are 
company. There is a preserve of them in the grounds of 
the next viUa; and after night-fall, one would think that 
scores upon scores of women in pattens were going up and 



GENOA. 29 

down a wet stone pavement without a moment's cessation. 
That is exactly the noise they make. 

The ruined chapel, on the picturesque and beautiful sea- 
shore, was dedicated, once upon a time, to Saint John the 
Baptist. I believe there is a legend that Saint John's bones 
were leceived there, with various solemnities, when they were 
first brought to Genoa; for Genoa possesses them to this 
day. When there is any uncommon tempest at sea, they are 
brought out and exhibited to the raging weather, which they 
never fail to calm. In consequence of this connection of 
Saint John with the city, great numbers of the common people 
are christened Giovanni Baptista, which latter name is 
pronounced in the Genoese patois '^Batcheetcha," like a 
sneeze. To hear everybody calling everybody else Batcheetcha, 
on a Sunday, or Festa-day, when there are crowds in the streets, 
is not a little singular and amusing to a stranger. 

The narrow lanes have great villas opening into them, 
whose walls (outside w^alls, I mean), are profusely painted 
with all sorts of subjects, grim and holy. But time and the 
sea-air have nearly obliterated them ; and they look like the 
entrance to Vauxhall Gardens on a sunny day. The court- 
yards of these houses are overgrown with grass and weeds ; 
all sorts of hideous patches cover the bases of the statues, as 
if they were afl3.icted with a cutaneous disorder ; the outer 
gates are rusty ; and the iron bars outside the lower windows 
are all tumbling down. Firewood is kept in halls where 
costly treasures might be heaped up, mountains high ; water- 
falls are dry and choked ; fountains, too dull to play, and too 
lazy to work, have just enough recollection of their identity, 
in their sleep, to make the neighbourhood damp ; and the 
sirocco wind is often blowing over all these things for days 
together, like a gigantic oven out for a holiday. iy 

Not long ago, there was a festa-day, in honour of the 
Virgiiis mother, when the young men of the neighbourhood, 
having worn green wreaths of the vine in some procession or 
other, bathed in them, by scores. It looked very odd and 
pretty. Though I am bound to confess (not knowing of the 
festa at that time), that I thought, and was quite satisfied, 
they wore them as horses do — to keep the flies off. 

Soon afterwards, there was an*)ther festa-day, in honour oi 
a St. Nazaro. One of the Albaro j'oung men brought two 
large bouquets soon after breakfast, and coming up-staii'S into 



80 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

tlie great sala, presented them liimself. Tliis was a polite 
way of begging for a contribution towards the expenses of 
Bome music in the Saint's honor, so we gave him whatever 
it may have been, and his messenger departed : well satisfied. 
At six o'clock in T the evening we went to the church — close 
at hand — a very gaudy place, hung all over with festoons and 
bright draperies, and filled, from the altar to the main door, 
with women, all seated. They wear no bonnets here, simply 
a long white veil — the '^mezzero;" and it was the most 
gauzy, ethereal-looking audience I ever saw. The young 
women are not generally pretty, but they walk remarkably 
well, and in their personal carriage and the management of 
their veils, display much innate grace and elegance. There 
were some men present : not very many : and a few of these 
were kneeling about the aisles, while everybody else tumbled 
over them. Innumerable tapers were burning in the church ; 
the bits of silver and tin about the saints (especially in the 
Virgin's necklace) sparkled brilliantly ; the priests were seated 
about the chief altar ; the organ played away, lustily, and a 
full band did the like ; while a conductor, in a little gallery 
opposite to the band, hammered away on the desk before him 
with a scroll ; and a tenor, without any voice, sang. The 
band played one way, the organ played another, the singer 
went a third, and the unfortunate conductor banged and 
banged, and flourished his scroll on some principle of his 
o^Ti : apparently weU satisfied with the whole performance. 
I never did hear such a discordant din. The heat was intense 
all the time. 

The men, in red caps, and with loose coats hanging on 
their shoulders (they never put them on), were playing bowls, 
and buying sweetmeats, immediately outside the church. 
When half-a-dozen of them finished a game, they came into 
the aisle, crossed themselves with the holy water, knelt on 
one knee for an instant, and walked off again to play another 
game at bowls. They are remarkably expert at this diversion, 
and will j)lay in the stony lanes and streets, and on the most 
uneven and disastrous ground for such a purpose, with as much 
nicety as on a billiard-table. But the most fiivourite game is the 
national one of Mora, which they pursue with surprising ardour, 
and at which they will stake everything they possess. It is a 
destructive kind of gambling, requiring no accessaries but the 
ten fingers, which are always — I intend no pun — at hand. 



GENOA. 31 

Two men play together. One calls a number — say the 
extreme one, ten. He marks what portion of it he pleases by 
throwing out three, or four, or five fingers ; and his adversary 
has, in the same instant, at hazard, and without seeing his 
hand, to throw out as many fingers as will make the exact 
balance. Their eyes and hands become so used to this, and 
act with such astonishing rapidity, that an uninitiated by- 
stander would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to follow 
the progress of the game. The initiated, however, of whom 
there is always an eager group looking on, devour it with the 
most intense avidity; and as they are always ready to 
champion one side or the other in case of a dispute, and are 
frequently divided in their partizanship, it is often a very 
noisy proceeding. It is never the quietest game in the world • 
for the numbers are always called in a loud sharp voice, and 
follow as close upon each other as they can be counted. On 
a holiday evening, standing at a window, or walking in a 
garden, or passing through the streets, or sauntering in any 
quiet place about the town, you will hear this game in 
progress in a score of wine-shops at once ; and looking over 
any vineyard walk, or turning almost any corner, will come 
upon a knot of players in full cry. It is observable that most 
men have a propensity to throw out some particular number 
oftener than another; and the vigilance with which two 
sharp-eyed players will mutually endeavour to detect this 
weakness, and adapt their game to it, is very curious and 
entertaining. The effect is greatly heightened by the universal 
suddenness and vehemence of gesture ; two men plajdng for 
half a farthing with an intensity as all-absorbing as if the 
stake were life. 

Hard by here is a large Palazzo, formerly belonging to 
some member of the Brignole family, but just now hired by 
a school of Jesuits for their summer quarters. I walked into 
its dismantled precincts the other evening about sunset, and 
couldn't help pacing up and down for a little time, drowsily 
taking in the aspect of the place : which is re]Deated hereabouts 
in all directions. 

I loitered to and fro, under a colonnade, forming two sides 
of a weedy, grass-grown court-yard, whereof the house formed 
a third side, and a low terrace-walk, overlooking the garden 
and the neighbouring hills, the foui'th. I don't believe there 
vras an uncracked stone in the whole pavement. In the 



32 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

centre was a melanclioly statue, so piebald in its decay, that it 
looked exactly as if it had been covered with sticking-plaster, 
and afterwards powdered. The stables, coach-houses, ojB&ces, 
were all empty, all ruinous, all utterly deserted. 

Doors had lost their hinges, and were holding on by their 
latches ; windows were broken, painted plaster had peeled off, 
and was lying about in clods ; fowls and cats had so taken 
possession of the out-buildings, that I couldn't help thinking 
of the fairy tales, and eyeing them with suspicion, as trans- 
formed retainers, waiting to be changed back again. One 
old Tom in particular : a scraggy brute, with a hungry green 
eye (a poor relation, in reahty, I am inclined to think) : came 
prowling round and round me, as if he half believed, for tlie 
moment, that I might be the hero come to marry the lady, 
and set all to-rights ; but discovering his mistake, he suddenly 
gave a grim snarl, and walked away with such a tremendous 
tail, that he couldn't get into the little hole where he lived, 
but was obliged to wait outside, until his indignation and his 
tail had gone down together. 

In a sort of summer-house, or whatever it may be, in this 
colonnade, some Englishmen had been living, like grubs in a 
nut ; but the Jesuits had given them notice to go, and they 
had gone, and that was shut up too. The house : a wandering, 
echoing, thundering barrack of a place, with the lower windows 
barred up, as usual, was mde open at the door : and I have 
no doubt I might have gone in, and gone to bed, and gone 
dead, and nobody a bit the wiser. Only one suite of rooms 
on an upper floor was tenanted ; and from one of these, the 
voice of a young-lady vocalist, practising bravura lustily, came 
flaunting out upon the silent evening. 

I went down into the garden, intended to be prim and 
quaint, with avenues, and terraces, and orange-trees, and 
statues, and water in stone basins; and everything was green, 
gaunt, weedy, straggling, under grown, or over growTi, mil- 
dewy, damp, redolent of all sorts of slabby, clammy, creeping, 
and uncomfortable life. There was nothing bright in the 
whole scene but a firefly — one solitary firefly — showing against 
the dark bushes like the last little speck of the departed Glory 
of the house ; and even it went flitting up and doT;\Ti at sudden 
angles, and leaving a place with a jerk, and describing an 
irregular circle, and returning to the same place with a twitch 
that startled one : as if it were looking for the rest of the 



GENOA. 83 

Glory, and wondering (Heaven knows it might !) what had 
become of it. 

In the course of two months, the flitting shapes and shadows 
of my dismal entering reverie gradually resolved themselves into 
familiar forms and substances ; and I already began to think 
that when the time should come, a year hence, for closing the 
long holiday and turning back to England, I might part from 
Genoa with anything but a glad heart. 

It is a place that ''grows upon you" everyday. There 
seems to be always something to find out in it. There are 
the most extraordinary alleys and by-ways to walk about in. 
You can lose your way (what a comfort that is, when you are 
idle !) twenty times a day, if you like ; and turn up again, 
under the most unexpected and surprising diificulties. It 
abounds in the strangest contrasts; things that are picturesque, 
ugly, mean, magnificent, delightful, and offensive, break upon 
the view at every turn. 

They who would know how beautiful the country imme- 
diately surrounding Genoa is, should climb (in clear weather) 
to the top of Monte Faccio, or, at least, ride round the city 
walls : a feat more easily performed. No prospect can be more 
diversified and lovely than the changing views of the harbour, 
and the valleys of the two rivers, the Polcevera and the 
Bizagno, from the heights along which the strongly fortified 
walls are carried, like the great wall of China in little. In 
not the least picturesque part of this ride, there is a fair 
specimen of a real Genoese tavern, where the visitor may 
derive good entertainment from real Genoese dishes, such as 
Tagliarini ; Ravioli ; German sausages, strong of garlic, sliced 
and eaten with fresh green figs; cocks' combs and sheep- 
kidneys, chopped up with mutton-chops and liver ; small 
pieces of some unknowTi part of a calf, twisted into small 
shreds, fried, and served up in a great dish like whitebait ; 
and other curiosities of that kind. They often get wine at 
these suburban Trattorie, from France and Spain and Portu- 
gal, which is brought over by small captains in little trading- 
vessels. They buy it at so much a bottle, without asking 
what it is, or caring to remember if anybody tells them, and 
usually divide it into two heaps ; of which they label one 
Champagne, and the other Madeira. The various opposite 
flavours, qualities, countries, ages, and vintages that are 



34 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

comprised under these two general heads is quite extraordi- 
nary. The most limited range is probably from cool Gruel 
up to old Marsala, and down again to apple Tea. 

The great majority of the streets are as narrow as any 
thoroughfare can well be, where people (even Italian people) 
are supposed to live and walk about ; being mere lanes, with 
here and there a kind of well, or breathing-place. The 
houses are immensely high, painted in all sorts of colours, 
and are in every stage and state of damage, dirt, and lack of 
repair. They are commonly let off in floors, or flats, like the 
houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in 
Paris. There are few street doors ; the entrance halls are, 
for the most part, looked upon as public property ; and ally 
moderately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune 
by now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible for 
coaches to penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, 
gilded and otherwise, for hire in divers places. A great many 
private chairs are also kept among the nobility and gentry ; 
and at night these are trotted to and fro in all directions, pre- 
ceded by bearers of great lanthorns, made of linen stretched 
upon a frame. The sedans and lanthorns are the legitimate 
successors of the long strings of patient and much-abused 
mules, that go jingling their little bells tlu^ough these confined 
streets all day long. They follow them, as regularly as the 
stars the sun. 

"Wlien shall I forget the Streets of Palaces : the Strada Nuova 
and the Strada Balbi ! or how the former looked one summer 
day, when I first saw it underneath the brightest and most 
intensely blue of summer skies : which its narrow perspective 
of immense mansions, reduced to a tapering and most precious 
strip of brightness, looking down upon the heavy shade below ! 
A brightness not too common, even in July and August, to be 
well esteemed : for, if the Truth must out, there were not 
eight blue skies in as many midsummer weeks, saving, some- 
times, early in the morning; when, looking out to sea, the 
water and the firmament were one world of deep and brilliant 
blue. At other times, there were clouds and haze enough to 
make an Englishman grumble in his own climate. 

The endless details of these rich Palaces : the walls of some 
of them, within, alive with masterpieces by Vandyke ! The 
great, heayj^ stone balconies, one above another, and tier over 
tier : with here and there, one larger than the rest, towering 



GENOA. 35 

LigL. up — a liuge marble platform ; tlie doorless vestibules, 
massively barred lower windows, immense public staircases, 
thick marble pillars, strong dungeon-like arcbes, and dreary, 
dreaming, echoing vaulted chambers : among which the eye 
wanders again, and again, and again, as every palace is 
succeeded by another — the terrace gardens between house and 
house, with green arches of the vine, and groves of orange- 
trees, and blushing oleander in full bloom, twenty, thirty, 
forty feet above the street — the painted halls, mouldering, and 
blotting, and rotting in the damp corners, and still shining out 
in beautiful colours and voluptuous designs, where the walls are 
dry — the faded figures on the outsides of the houses, holding 
wreaths, and croTvns, and flying upward, and downward, and 
standing in niches, and here and there looking fainter and 
more feeble than elsewhere, by contrast with some fresh little 
Cupids, who on a more recently decorated portion of the front, 
are stretching out what seems to be the semblance of a blanket, 
but is, indeed, a sun-dial — the steep, steep, up-hill streets of 
email palaces (but very large palaces for all that), with marble 
terraces looking down into close by-ways — the magnificent and 
innumerable Churches ; and the rapid passage from a street of 
stately edifices, into a maze of the vilest squalor, steaming with 
unwholesome stenches, and swarming with half-naked children 
and whole worlds of dirty people — make up, altogether, such a 
scene of wonder : so lively, and yet so dead : so noisy, and yet 
so quiet : so obtrusive, and yet so shy and lowering : so wide 
awake, and yet so fast asleep : that it is a sort of intoxication 
to a stranger to walk on, and on, and on, and look about him. 
A bewildering phantasmagoria, with all the inconsistency of a 
dream, and all the pain and all the pleasure of an extravagant 
reality ! 

The different uses to which some of these Palaces are 
applied, all at once, is characteristic. For instance, the 
English Banker (my excellent and hospitable friend) has his 
office in a good-sized Palazzo in the Strada Nuova. In the 
hall (every inch of which is elaborately painted, but which is 
as dirty as a police-station in London), a hook-nosed Saracen's 
Head with an immense quantity of black hair (there is a man 
attached to it) sells walking-sticks. On the other side of the 
doorway, a lady with a showy handkerchief for head-dresa 
(wife to the Saracen's Head, I believe) sells articles of her own 
knitting ; and sometimes flowers. A little farther in, two or 



36 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

three blind men occasionally beg. Sometimes, they are visited 
by a man without legs, on a little go-cart, but who has such a 
fresh-coloured, lively face, and such a respectable, well-con- 
ditioned body, that he looks as if he had simk into the ground 
up to his middle, or had come, but partially, up a flight of 
cellar-steps to speak to somebody. A little fui'ther in, a few 
men, perhaps, lie asleep in the middle of the day ; or they may 
be chairmen waitinc: for their absent fi'eia-ht. If so, thev have 
brought their chairs in with them, and there they stand also. 
On the left of the hall is a little room : a hatter's shop. On 
the first floor, is the English bank. On the first floor also, is 
a whole house, and a good large residence too. Heaven knows 
what there may be above that ; but when you are there, you 
have only just begun to go up-stairs. And yet, coming down 
stairs again, thinking of this ; and passing out at a gi-eat crazy 
door in the back of the hall, instead of tiu-ning the other way, 
to get into the street again ; it bangs behind you, making the 
dismallest and most lonesome echoes, and you stand in a yard 
(the yard of the same house) which seems to have been 
unvisited by human foot, for a hundi-ed years. Not a sound 
disturbs its repose. Not a head, thrust out of any of the 
grim, dark, jealous windows within sight, makes the weeds in 
the cracked pavement faint of heart, by suggesting the 
possibility of there being hands to grub them up. Opposite to 
you, is a giant figiu-e carved in stone, reclining, with an urn, 
upon a lofty piece of artificial rockwork ; and out of the urn, 
dangles the fag end of a leaden pipe, M-hich, once upon a time, 
poured a small torrent down the rocks. But the eye-sockets 
of the giant are not drier than this channel is now. He seems 
to have given his urn, which is nearly upside down, a final 
tilt; and after cryiijg, like a sepulchral child, *' All gone ! " to 
have lapsed into a stony silence. 

In the sti-eets of shops, the houses are much smaller, but of 
great size notwithstanding, and extremely high. They are 
very dirty : quite undrained, if m.j nose be at all reliable : and 
emit a peculiar fragrance, like the smell of very bad cheese, 
kept in xevj hot blankets. Notwithstanding the height of the 
houses, there would seem to have been a lack of room in the 
Citj^, for new houses are thrust in everywhere. Wherever it 
has been possible to cram a tumble- down tenement into a crack 
or comer, in it has gone. If there be a nook or angle in the 
wall of a church, or a crevice in any other dead wall, of any 



GENOA. 37 

sort, there you are sure to find some kind of habitation : 
looking as if it had grown there, like a fungus. Against the 
Government house, against the old Senate house, round about 
any large building, little shops stick close, like parasite vermin 
to the great carcase. And for all thif, look where you may : 
up steps, down steps, anywhere, everywhere : there are 
irregular houses, receding, starting forward, tumbling down, 
leaning against their neighbours, crippling themselves or their 
friends by some means or other, until one, more irregular than 
the rest, chokes up the way, and you can't see any further. 

One of the rottenest-looking parts of the town, I think, is 
down by the landing- wharf : though it may be, that its being 
associated with a great deal of rottenness on the evening of our 
arrival, has stamped it deeper in my mind. Here, again, the 
houses are very high, and are of an infinite variety of deformed 
shapes, and have (as most of the houses have) something 
hanging out of a great many windows, and wafting its frowsy 
fragrance on the breeze. Sometimes, it is a curtain; some- 
times, it is a carpet ; sometimes, it is a bed ; sometimes, a 
whole line-full of clotlies; but there is almost always some- 
thing. Before the basements of these houses, is an arcade 
over the pavement : very massive, dark, and low, like an old 
crypt. The stone, or plaster, of which it is made, has turned 
quite black ; and against every one of these black piles, all 
sorts of filth and garbage seem to accumulate spontaneously. 
Beneath some of the arches, the sellers of maccaroni and 
polenta establish their stalls, which are by no means inviting. 
The offal of a fish-market, near at hand — that is to say, of a 
back lane, where people sit upon the ground and on various 
old bulk-heads and sheds, and sell fish when they have any 
to dispose of — and of a vegetable market, constructed on the 
same principle — are contributed to the decoration of this 
quarter ; and as all the mercantile business is transacted hero, 
and it is crowded all day, it has a very decided flavour about 
it. The Porto Franco, or Free Port (where goods brought in 
from foreign countries pay no duty until they are sold and 
taken out, as in a bonded warehouse in England), is down 
here also ; and two portentous officials, in cocked liats, stand 
at the gate to search you if they choose, and to keep out 
Monks and Ladies. For, Sanctity as well as Beauty has been 
known to yield to the temptation of smuggling, and in the 
same way : that is to say, by concealing the smuggled property 



88 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

beneath the loose folds of its dress. So Sanctity and Beauty 
may, by no means, enter. 

The Streets of Genoa would be all the better for the 
importation of a few Priests of prepossessing appearance. 
Evei y fourth or fifth man in the streets is a Priest or a Monk ; 
and there is pretty sure to be at least one itinerant ecclesiastic 
inside or outside every hackney carriage on the neighbouring 
roads. I have no knowledge, elsewhere, of more repulsive 
countenances than are to be found among these gentry. If 
Nature's handwriting be at all legible, greater varieties of 
sloth, deceit, and intellectual torpor, could hardly be observed 
among any class of men in the world. 

Mr. Pepys once heard a clergyman assert in his sermon, in 
illustration of his respect for the Priestly office, that if he could 
meet a Priest and angel together, he would salute the Priest 
first. I am rather of the opinion of Petraech who, when his 
pupil Boccaccio wrote to him in great tribulation, that he had 
been visited and admonished for his vtrritings by a Carthusian 
Friar who claimed to be a messenger immediately commissioned 
by Heaven for that piu^pose, replied, that for his own part, he 
would take the liberty of testing the reality of the commission 
by personal observation of the Messenger's face, eyes, forehead, 
behaviour, and discourse. I cannot but believe myself, from 
similar observation, that many unaccredited celestial messengers 
may be seen skulking through the streets of Genoa, or droning 
away their lives in other Italian towns. 

Perhaps the Cappuccini, though not a learned body, are, as 
an order, the best friends of the people. They seem to mingle 
with them more immediately, as their counsellors and com- 
forters ; and to go among them more, when they are sick ; 
and to pry less than some other orders, into the secrets of 
families, for the purpose of establishing a baleful ascendancy 
over their weaker members ; and to be influenced by a less 
fierce desire to make converts, and once made, to let them go 
to ruin, soul and body. They may be seen, in their coarse 
dress, in all parts of the town at all times, and begging in the 
markets early in the morning. Tlie Jesuits too, muster 
strong in the streets, and go slinking noiselessly about, in 
pairs, like black cats. 

In some of the narrow passages, distinct trades congregate. 
There is a street of jewellers, and there is a row of book- 
sellers ; but even down in places where nobody ever can, or 



GENOA. 39 

ever could, penetrate in a carriagej, there are mighty old 
palaces shut in among the gloomiest and closest walls, and 
almost shut out from the sun. Very few of the tradesmen 
have any idea of setting forth their goods, or disposing them 
for show. If you, a stranger, want to buy anything, you 
usually look round the shop till you see it ; then clutch it, if 
it be within reach ; and inquire how much. Everything is 
sold at the most unlikely place. If you want coffee, you go to 
a sweetmeat- shop ; and if you want meat, you will probably 
find it behind an old checked curtain, down haK a dozen steps, 
in some sequestered nook as hard to find as if the com- 
modity were poison, and Genoa's law were death to any that 
uttered it. 

Most of the apothecaries' shops are great lounging places. 
Here, grave men with sticks, sit down in the shade for hours 
together, passing a meagre Genoa paper from hand to hand, 
and talking, drowsily and sparingly, about the News. Two 
or three of these are poor physicians, ready to proclaim them- 
selves on an emergency, and tear off with any messenger who 
may arrive. You may know them by the way in which they 
stretch their necks to listen, when you enter; and by the 
sigh with which they fall back again into their dull corners, 
on finding that you only want medicine. Few people lounge 
in the barbers' shops ; though they are very numerous, as 
hardly any man shaves himself. But the apothecary's has its 
group of loungers, who sit back among the bottles, with their 
hands folded over the tops of their sticks. So still and quiet, 
that either you don't see them in the darkened shop, or 
mistake them — as I did one ghostly man in bottle-green, ono 
day, with a hat like a stopper — for Horse Medicine. 

On a summer evening the Genoese are as fond of putting 
themselves, as their ancestors were of putting houses, in every 
available inch of space within and about the town. In all 
the lanes and alleys, and up every little ascent, and on every 
dwarf wall, and on every flight of steps, they cluster like 
bees. Meanwhile (and especially on Festa-days) the bells of 
the churches ring incessantly ; not in peals, or any known 
form of sound, but in a horrible, irregular, jerking, dingle, 
dingle, dingle : with a sudden stop at every fifteenth dingle or 
so, which is maddening. This performance is usually achieved 
by a boy up in the steeple, who takes hold of the clapper, or 



40 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

a little rope attached to it, and tries to dingle louder than 
every other boy similarly employed. The noise is supposed 
to be particularly obnoxious to Evil Spirits ; but looking up 
into the steeples, and seeing (and hearing) these young 
Christians thus engaged, one might very naturally mistake 
them for the Enemy, 

Festa-days, early in the autumn, are very numerous. All 
the shops were shut up, twice within a week, for these 
holidays ; and one night, all the houses in the neighbourhood 
of a particular church were illuminated, while the church 
itself was lighted, outside, with torches ; and a grove of 
blazing links was erected, in an open place outside one of 
the city gates. This part of the ceremony is prettier and 
more singular a little way in the country, where you can 
trace the illuminated cottages all the way up a steep hill 
side ; and where you pass festoons of tapers, wasting away in 
the starlight night, before some lonely little house upon the 
road. 

On these days, they always dress the church of the saint 
in whose honour the Festa is holden, very gaily. Gold- 
embroidered festoons of different colours, hang from the 
arches ; the altar furniture is set forth ; and, sometimes, even 
the lofty pillars are swathed from top to bottom in tight- 
fitting draperies. The cathedral is dedicated to St. Lorenzo. 
On St. Lorenzo's day, we went into it, just as the sun was 
setting. Although these decorations are usually in very 
indifferent taste, the effect, just then, was very superb, 
indeed. For the whole building was di-essed in red ; and the 
sinking sun, streaming in, through a great red curtain in the 
chief doorway, made all the gorgeousness its own. When 
the sun went down, and it gradually grew quite dark inside, 
except for a few twinkling tapers on the principal altar, and 
some small dangling silver lamps, it was very mysterious and 
effective. But, sitting in any of the chui'ches towards evening, 
is like a mild dose of opium. 

With the money collected at a Festa, they usually pay for 
the dressing of the church, and for the hiring of the band, 
and for the tapers. If there be any left (which seldom 
happens, I believe) the souls in purgatory get the benefit of it. 
They are also supposed to have the benefit of the exertions 
of certain small boys, who shake money-boxes before some 
mysterious little^buildings like rui'ol tuiupikes, which (usually 



GENOA. 41 

shut up close) fly open on Red-letter days, and disclose an 
image and some flowers inside. 

Just witiiout the city gate, on the Albara road, is a small 
house, with an altar in it, and a stationary money-box : also 
for the benefit of the souls in Purgatory. Still further to 
stimulate the charitable, there is a myonstrous painting on 
the plaster, on either side of the grated door, rej)resenting a 
select party of souls, frying. One of them has a grey 
moustache, and an elaborate head of grey hair : as if he had 
been taken out of a hairdresser's window and cast into the 
furnace. There he is : a most grotesque and hideously comic 
old soul '. for ever blistering in the real sun, and melting in 
the mimic fire, for the gratification and improvement (and 
the contributions) of the poorer Genoese. 

They are not a very joyous people, and are seldom seen to 
dance on their holidays : the staple places of entertainment 
among the women, being the churches and the public walks. 
They are very good-tempered, obliging, and industrious. 
Industry has not made them clean, for their habitations are 
extremely fiilthy, and their usual occupation on a fine Sunday 
morning, is to sit at their doors, hunting in each others' 
heads. But their dwellings are so close and confined that if 
those parts of the city had been beaten down by Massena in 
the time of the terrible Blockade, it would have at least 
occasioned one public benefit among many misfortunes. 

The Peasant Women, with naked feet and legs, are so con- 
stantly washing clothes, in the public tanks, and in every 
stream and ditch, that one cannot help wondering, in the midst 
of all this dirt, who wears them when they are clean. The 
custom is to lay the wet linen which is being operated upon, 
on a smooth stone, and hammer away at it, with a flat wooden 
mallet. This they do, as furiously as if they were revenging 
themselves on dress in general for being connected with the 
FaU of Mankind. 

It is not unusual to see, lying on the edge of the tank at 
these times, or on another flat stone, an unfortunate baby, 
tightly swathed up, arms and legs and all, in an enormous 
quantity of wrapper, so that it is unable to move a toe or 
finger. This custom (which we often see represented in old 
pictures) is universal among the common people. A child 
is left anywhere without the possibility of crawling away, 
or is accidentally knocked off a shelf, or tumbled out of bed, 



42 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

or is hung up to a hook now and then, and left dangling- like 
a doll at an English rag shop, without the least inconvenience 
to anybody. 

I was sitting, one Sunday, soon after my arrival, in the 
little country church of San Martino, a couple of miles from 
the city, while a baptism took place. I saw the priest, and 
an attendant with a large taper, and a man, and a woman 
and some others ; but I had no more idea, until the ceremony 
was all over, that it was a baptism, or that the curious little 
stiff instrument, that was passed from one to another, in 
the course of the ceremony, by the handle — like a short 
poker — was a child, than I had that it was my own christening. 
I borrowed the child afterwards, for a minute or two (it was 
lying across the font then) and found it very red in the face 
but perfectly quiet, and not to be bent on any terms. The 
number of cripples in the streets, soon ceased to surprise me. 

There are plenty of Saints' and Virgin's Shrines, of course ; 
generally at the corners of streets. The favourite memento 
to the Faithful, about Genoa, is a painting, representing a 
peasant on his knees, with a spade and some other agricul- 
tui^al implements beside him; and the Madonna, with the 
Infant Saviour in her arms, appearing to him in a cloud. 
This is the Legend of the Madonna della Guardia : a chapel 
on a mountain within a few miles, which is in high repute. 
It seems that this peasant lived all alone by himself, tilling 
some land atop of the mountain, where, being a devout man, 
he daily said his prayers to the Virgin in the open air ; for 
his hut was a very poor one. Upon a certain day, the Virgin 
appeared to him, as in the pictui'e, and said, " Why do you 
pray in the open air, and without a priest ? " The peasant 
explained because there was neither priest nor chiu-ch at 
hand — a very uncommon complaint indeed in Italy. " I 
should wish, then," said the Celestial Visitor, ** to have a 
chapel built here, in which the prayers of the Faithful may 
be offered up." " But Santissima Madonna," said the peasant, 
" I am a poor man ; and chapels cannot be built without 
money. They must be supported, too, Santissima ; for to 
have a chapel and not support it liberally, is a wickedness 
— a deadly sin." This sentiment gave groat satisfaction to 
the visitor. "Go!" said she. "There is such a village 
in the valley on the left, and such another village in the 
valley on the right, and such another village elsewhere, 



GENOA. 43 

that will gladly contribute to the building of a chapel. Go 
to them ! Relate what you have seen ; and do not doubt that 
sufficient money will be forthcoming to erect my chapel, or 
that it will, afterwards, be handsomely maintained." All of 
which (miraculously) turned out to be quite true. And in 
proof of this prediction and revelation, there is the chapel of 
the Madonna deUa Guardia, rich and flourishing at this day. 

The splendour and variety of the Genoese churches, can 
hardly be exaggerated. The church of the Annunciata 
especially : built, like many of the others, at the cost of one 
noble family, and now in slow progress of repair : from the 
outer door to the utmost height of the high cupola, is so 
elaborately painted and set in gold, that it looks (as Simond 
describes it, in his charming book on Italy) like a great 
enamelled snuff-box. Most of the richer churches contain 
some beautiful pictures, or other embellishments of great price, 
almost universally set, side by side, with sprawling effigies 
of maudlin monks, and the veriest trash and tinsel ever seen. 

It may be a consequence of the frequent direction of the 
popular mind, and pocket, to the souls in Purgatory, but 
there is very little tenderness for the bodies of the dead here. 
For the very poor, there are, immediately outside one angle 
of the walls, and behind a jutting point of the fortification, 
near the sea, certain common pits — one for every day in the 
year — which all remain closed up, until the turn of each 
comes for its daily reception of dead bodies. Among the 
troops in the town, there are usually some Swiss : more or 
less. When any of these die, they are buried out of a fund 
maintained by such of their countrymen as are resident in 
Genoa. Their providing coffins for these men, is matter of 
great astonishment to the authorities. 

Certainly, the effect of this promiscuous and indecent 
splashing down of dead people into so many wells, is bad. 
It surrounds Death with revolting associations, that insensibly 
become connected with those whom Death is approaching. 
Indifference and avoidance are the natiiral result ; and all the 
softening influences of the great sorrow are harshly disturbed. 

There is a ceremony when an old Cavaliere or the lil^e, 
expires, of erecting a pile of benches in the cathedral, to 
represent his bier ; covering them over with a pall of black 
velvet; putting his hat and sword on the top; making a 
little square of seats about the whole ; and sending out formal 



44 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

invitations to his friends and acquaintance to come and sit 
there, and hear Mass : which is performed at the principal 
Altar, decorated with an infinity of candles for that purpose. 

When the better kind of people die, or are at the point of 
death, their nearest relations generally walk off : retiring 
into the coimtry for a little change, and leaving the body to 
be disposed of, without any superintendence from them. 
The procession is usually formed, and the coffin borne, and 
the funeral conducted, by a body of persons called a Con- 
fraternita, who, as a kind of voluntary penance, undertake to 
perform these offices, in regular rotation, for the dead ; but 
who, mingling something of pride with their humility, are 
dressed in a loose garment covering their whole person, and 
wear a hood concealing the face ; with breathing holes and 
apertures for the eyes. The effect of this costume is very 
ghastly : especially in the case of a certain Blue Confraternita 
belonging to Genoa, who, to say the least of them, are very 
ugly customers, and who look — suddenly encountered in 
their pious ministration in the streets — as if they were 
Ghoules or Demons, bearing off the body for themselves. 

Although such a custom may be liable to the abuse 
attendant on many Italian customs, of being recognised as a 
means of establishing a current account with Heaven, on 
which to draw, too easily, for future bad actions, or as an 
expiation for past misdeeds, it must be admitted to be a good 
one, and a practical one, and one involving unquestionably 
good works. A voluntary service like this, is surely better 
than the imposed penance (not at all an infrequent one) of 
giving so many licks to such and such a stone in the pave- 
ment of the cathedral ; or than a vow to the Madonna to wear 
nothing but blue for a year or two. This is supposed to give 
great delight above ; blue being (as is well known) the 
Madonna's favourite colour. Women who have devoted 
themselves to this act of Faith, are very commonly seen 
walking in the streets. 

There are three theatres in the city, besides an old one 
now rarely opened. The most important — the Carlo Felice : 
the opera-house of Genoa — is a very splendid, commodious, 
and beautiful theatre. A company of comedians were acting 
there, when we arrived : and after their departure, a second- 
rate opera company came. The great season is not until the 
carnival time — in the spring. Nothing impressed me, so 



GENOA. 45 

mucli, in mj visits here (wMch. were pretty numerous) as the 
uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who 
resent the slightest defect, take nothing good-humouredly, 
seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, 
and spare the actresses as little as the actors. But, as there 
is nothing else of a public nature at which they are allowed 
to express the least disapprobation, perhaps they are resolved 
to make the most of this opportimity. 

There are a great number of Piedmontese Officers too, who 
are allowed the privilege of kicking their heels in the pit, for 
next to nothing : gratuitous, or cheap accommodation for 
these gentlemen being insisted on, by the Governor, in all 
public or semi-public entertainments. They are lofty critics 
in consequence, and infinitely more exacting than if they made 
the unhappy manager's fortune. 

The Teatro Diukno, or Day Theatre, is a covered stage 
in the open air, where the performances take place by 
daylight, in the cool of the afternoon ; commencing at four or 
five o'clock, and lasting some three hours. It is curious, 
sitting among the audience, to have a fine view of the 
neighbouring hills and houses, and to see the neighbours at 
their windows looking on, and to hear the bells of the churches 
and convents ringing at most complete cross-purposes with 
the scene. Beyond this, and the novelty of seeing a play in 
the fresh pleasant air, with the darkening evening closing in, 
there is nothing very exciting or characteristic in the 
performances. The actors are indifferent ; and though they 
sometimes represent one of Goldoni's comedies, the staple of 
the Drama is French. Anything like nationality is dangerous 
to despotic governments, and Jesuit-beleaguered kings. 

The Theatre of Puppets, or Marionetti — a famous company 
from Milan — is, without any exception, the drollest exhibition 
I ever beheld in my life. I never saw anything so exquisitely 
ridiculous. They look between four and five feet high, but 
are really much smaller ; for when a musician in the orches- 
tra happens to put his hat on the stage, it becomes alarmingly 
gigantic, and almost blots out an actor. They usually play a 
comedy, and a ballet. The comic man in the comedy I saw 
one summer night, is a waiter at an hotel. There never was 
Buch a locomotive actor, since the world began. Great pains 
are taken with him. He has extra joints in his legs : and a 
practical eye, with which he winks at the pit, in a manner 



46 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

that is absolutely insupportable to a stranger, but which the 
initiated audience, mainly composed of the common people, 
receive (so they do everything else) quite as a matter of 
course, and as if he were a man. His spirits are prodigious. 
He continually shakes his legs, and winks his eye. And 
there is a heavy father with grey hair, who sits down on the 
regular conventional stage-bank, and blesses his daughter ia 
the regular conventional way, who is tremendous. No one 
would suppose it possible that anything short of a real man 
could be so tedious. It is the triumph of art. 

In the ballet, an Enchanter runs away with the Bride, in 
the very hour of her nuptials. He brings her to his cave, 
and tries to soothe her. They sit down on a sofa (the regular 
sofa ! in the regular place, O.P. Second Entrance !) and a 
procession of musicians enter ; one creature playing a drum, 
and knocking himseK off his legs at every blow. These 
failing to delight her, dancers appear. Four first; then 
two ; the two ; the flesh-coloured two. The way in which 
they dance ; the height to which they spring ; the impossible 
and inhuman extent to which they pirouette ; the revelation 
of their preposterous legs ; the coming down with a pause, 
on the very tips of their toes, when the music requires it ; 
the gentleman's retiring up, when it is the lady's turn ; and 
the lady's retiring up when it is the gentleman's turn ; the 
final passion of a pas-de-deux ; and the going off with a 
bound ! — I shall never see a real ballet, with a composed 
countenance again. 

I went, another night, to see these Puppets act a play 
called '' St. Helena, or the Death of Napoleon." It began 
by the disclosure of Napoleon, with an immense head, seated 
on a sofa in his chamber at St. Helena; to whom his valet 
entered, with this obscure announcement : 

" Sir Yew ud se on Low ! " (the ow, as in cow). 

Sir Hudson (that you could have seen his regimentals !) 
was a perfect mammoth of a man, to Napoleon ; hideously 
ugly ; with a monstrously disproportionate face, and a great 
clump for the lower-jaw, to express his tyrannical and 
obdurate nature. He began his system of persecution, by 
calling his prisoner ''General Buonaparte;" to Mdiich the 
latter replied, with the deepest tragedy, " Sir Yew ud se on 
Low, call me not thus. Repeat tliat phrase and leave me ! 
I am Napoleon, Emperor of France ! " Sir Yew ud se on, 



GENOA. 47 

notMng daunted, proceeded to entertain Mm with, an ordinance 
of the British. Government, regulating the state he should 
preserve, and the furniture of his rooms : and limiting his 
attendants to four or five persons. " Four or five for me I " 
said Napoleon. " Me ! One hundred thousand men were 
lately at my sole command ; and this English officer talks of 
four or five forme ! " Throughout the piece, Napoleon (who 
talked very like the real Napoleon, and was, for ever, having 
small soliloquies by himself) was very bitter on '' these 
EngKsh officers," and ''these English soldiers:" to the 
great satisfaction, of the audience, who were perfectly delighted 
to have Low bullied; and who, whenever Low said " General 
Buonaparte " (which he always did : always receiving the 
same correction) quite execrated him. It would be hard to 
say why ; for Italians have little cause to sympathise with 
Napoleon, Heaven knows. 

There was no plot at all, except that a French officer 
disguised as an Englishman, came to propound a plan of 
escape ; and being discovered, but not before Napoleon had 
magnanimously refused to steal his freedom, was immediately 
ordered off by Low to be hanged. In two very long speeches, 
which Low made memorable, by winding up with *' Yas ! " 
— to show that he was EngKsh — which brought down 
thunders of applause. Napoleon was so affected by this 
catastrophe, that he fainted away on the spot, and was 
carried out by two other puppets. Judging from what 
followed, it would appear that he never recovered the shock ; 
for the next act showed him, in a clean shirt, in his bed 
(curtains crimson and white), where a lady, prematurely 
dressed in mourning, brought two little children, who kneeled 
down by the bed-side, while he made a decent end ; the last 
word on his lips being " Vatterlo." 

It was unspeakably ludicrous. Buonaparte's boots were so 
wonderfuUy beyond control, and did such marvellous things of 
their own accord : doubling themselves up, and getting under 
tables, and daugiing in the air, and sometimes skating away 
with him, out of all human knowledge, when he was in full 
speech — mischances which were not rendered the less absurd, 
by a settled melancholy depicted in his face. To put an end 
to one conference with Low, he had to go to a table, and read 
a book : when it was the finest spectacle I ever beheld, to see 
his body bending over the volume, like a boot-jack, and his 



48 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

sentimental eyes glaring obstinately into the pit. He was 
prodigiously good, in bed, with an immense collar to his shirt, 
and iiis little hands outside the coverlet. So was Dr. Antom- 
marchi, represented by a Puppet with long lank hair, like 
Maw worm's, who, in consequence of some derangement of his 
wires, hovered about the couch like a vulture, and gave 
medical opinions in the air. He was almost as good as Low, 
though the latter was great at all times — a decided brute and 
villain, beyond all possibility of mistake. Low was especially 
fine at the last, when, hearing the doctor and the valet say, 
" The Emperor is dead ! " he pulled out his watch, and wound 
up the piece (not the watch) by exclaiming, with characteristic 
brutality, ''Ha! ha! Eleven minutes to six ! The General 
dead ! and the spy hanged ! " This brought the curtain down, 
triumphantly. 

There is not in Italy, they say (and I believe them) a 
lovelier residence than the Palazzo Peschiere, or Palace of 
the Fishponds, whither we removed as soon as our three 
months' tenancy of the Pink Jail at Albaro had ceased and 
determined. 

It stands on a height within the walls of Genoa, but aloof 
from the town : surrounded by beautiful gardens of its own, 
adorned with statues, vases, fountains, marble basins, terraces, 
walks of orange-trees and lemon-trees, groves of roses and 
camelias. All its apartments are beautiful in their proportions 
and decorations ; but the great hall, some fifty feet in height, 
with three large windows at the end, overlooking the whole 
town of Genoa, the harbour, and the neighbouring sea, afibrds 
one of the most fascinating and delightful prospects in the 
world. Any house more cheerful and habitable than the great 
rooms are, within, it would be difiicult to conceive ; and 
certainly nothing more delicious than the scene without, in 
sunshine or in moonlight, could be imagined. It is more like 
an enchanted palace in an Eastern story than a grave and 
sober lodging. 

How you may wander on, from room to room, and never 
tire of the wild fancies on the walls and ceilings, as briglit in 
their fresh colouring as if they had been painted yesterday ; 
or how one floor, or even the great hall which opens on eight 
other rooms, is a ■ spacious promenade ; or how there are 
corridors and bed-chambers above, which we never use and 



GENOA. 49 

rarely visit, and scarcely know tiie way througli; or how 
there is a view of a perfectly different character on each of 
the four sides of the building; matters little. But that 
prospect from the hall, is like a vision to me. I go back to 
it, in fancy, as I have done in calm reality a hundred times 
a day ; and stand there, looking out, with the sweet scents 
from the garden rising up about me, in a perfect dream of 
happiness. 

There lies aU Genoa, in beautiful confasion, with its many 
chui^hes, monasteries, and convents, pointing up into the 
sunny sky ; and down below me, just where the roofs begin, 
a solitary convent parapet, fashioned like a gallery, with an 
iron cross at the end, where sometimes, early in the mornino* 
I have seen a little group of dark-veiled nuns gliding sorrow- 
fully to and fro, and stopping now and then to peep down 
upon the waking world in which they have no part. Old 
Monte Faccio, brightest of hills in good weather, but sulkiest 
when storms are coming on, is here, upon the left. The Fort 
within the walls (the good King built it to command the 
town, and beat the houses of the Genoese about their ears, in 
case they should be discontented) commands that height upon 
the right. The broad sea lies beyond, in front there; and 
that line of coast, beginning by the light-house, and tapering 
away, a mere speck in the rosy distance, is the beautiful coast 
road that leads to Nice. The garden near at hand, among 
the roofs and houses : all red with roses and fresh with little 
fountains : is the Acqua Sola — a pubHc promenade, where the 
military band plays gaily, and the white veils cluster thick, 
and the Genoese nobility ride round, and round, and round, in 
state-clothes and coaches at least, if not in absolute wisdom. 
Within a stone' s-throw, as it seems, the audience of the Day- 
Theatre sit : their faces turned this way. But as the stage is 
hidden, it is very odd, without a knowledge of the cause, to 
see their faces change so suddenly from earnestness to laughter; 
and odder still, to hear the rounds upon rounds of applause, 
rattling in the evening air, to which the curtain falls. But, 
being Sunday night, they act their best and most attractive 
play. And now, the sim is going down, in such magnificent 
array of red, and green, and golden light, as neither pen nor 
pencil could depict ; and to the ringing of the vesper bells, 
darkness sets in at once, without a twilight. Then, lights 
begin to shine in Genoa, and on the country road ; and the 



50 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

revolving lanthorn out at sea there, flasliing, for an instant, 
on this palace front and portico, illuminates it as if there were 
a bright moon bursting from behind a cloud ; then, merges it 
in deep obscurity. And this, so far as I know, is the only 
reason why the Genoese avoid it after dark, and think it 
haunted. 

My memory will haunt it, many nights, in time to come ; 
but nothing worse, I will engage. The same Ghost will 
occasionally sail away, as I did one pleasant Autumn evening, 
into the bright prospect, and snuff the morning air at 
Marseilles. 

The corpulent hair-dresser was still sitting in his slippers 
outside his shop-door there, but the twirling ladies in the 
window, with the natural inconstancy of their sex, had ceased 
to twirl, and were languishing, stock still, with their beautiful 
faces addressed to blind corners of the establishment, where it 
"was impossible for admirers to penetrate. 

The steamer had come from Genoa in a delicious run of 
eighteen hours, and we were going to run back again by the 
Cornice Road from Nice : not being satisfied to have seen only 
the outsides of the beautiful towns that rise in picturesque 
white clusters from among the olive woods, and rocks, and 
hills, upon the margin of the Sea. 

The Boat which started for Nice that night, at eight o'clock, 
was very small, and so crowded with goods that there was 
scarcely room to move ; neither was there an^^thing to eat on 
board, except bread ; nor to drink, except coffee. But being 
due at Nice at about eight or so in the morning, this was of 
no consequence : so when we began to wink at the bright 
stars, in involuntary acknowledgment of their winking at us, 
we turned into our berths, in a crowded, but cool little cabin, 
and slept soundly till morning. 

The Boat, being as dull and dogged a little boat as ever 
was built, it was within an hour of noon when we turned 
into Nice Harbour, where we very little expected anything 
but breakfast But we were laden with wool. Wool must 
not remain in the Custom House at Marseilles more than 
twelve months at a stretch, without paying duty. It is the 
custom to make fictitious removals of unsold wool to evade 
this law ; to take it somewhere when the twelve months are 
nearly out ; bring it straight back again ; and warehouse it, 
as a new cargo, for nearly twelve months longer. This wool 



NICE HARBOUE. ^^ 

of oui*s, had come originally from some place in the East. It 
was recognised as Eastern produce, the moment we entered 
the harbour. Accordingly, the gay little Sunday boats, full 
of holiday people, which had come off to greet us, were warned 
away by the authorities ; we were declared in quarantine ; 
and a great flag was solemnly run up to the mast-head on the 
wharf, to make it known to all the town. 

It was a very hot day indeed. We were unshaved, 
unwashed, undressed, unfed, and could hardly enjoy the 
absurdity of lying blistering in a lazy harbour, with the 
town looking on from a respectful distance, all manner of 
whiskered men in cocked hats discussing our fate at a remote 
guard-house, with gestures (we looked very hard at them 
through telescopes) expressive of a week's detention at least : 
and nothing whatever the matter all the time. But even in 
this crisis the Brave Courier achieved a triumph. He tele- 
graphed somebody (/ saw nobody) either naturally connected 
with the hotel, or put en rapjport with the establishment for 
that occasion only. The telegraph was answered, and in half 
an hour or less, there came a loud shout from the guard- 
house. The captain was wanted. Everybody helped the 
captain into his boat. Everybody got his luggage, and said 
we were going. The captain rowed away, and disappeared 
behind a little jutting corner of the Galley-slaves' Prison : 
and presently came back with something, very sulkily. The 
Brave Courier met him at the side, and received the some- 
thing as its rightful owner. It was a wicker-basket, folded in 
a linen cloth ; and in it were two great bottles of wine, a 
roast fowl, some salt fish chopped with garlic, a great loaf of 
bread, a dozen or so of peaches, and a few other trifles. 
When we had selected our own breakfast, the Brave Courier 
invited a chosen party to partake of these refreshments, and 
assured them that they need not be deterred by motives of 
delicacy, as he would order a second basket to be furnished at 
their expense. Which he did — no one knew how — and by 
and by, the captain being again summoned, again sulkily 
returned with another something ; over which my popular 
attendant presided as before : carving with a clasp-knife, 
his own personal property, something smaller than a Boman 
sword. 

The whole party on board were made merry by these 
unexpected supplies; but none more so, than a loquacious 



62 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

little Frenchmaii, who got driink in five minutes, and a 
sturdy Cappuccino Friar, wlio had taken everybody's fancy 
miglitily, and was one of the best friars in the world, I verily 
believe. 

Ho had a free, open countenance ; and a rich brown, 
flow-ing beard ; and was a remarkably handsome man, of 
about fifty. He had come up to us, early in the morning, 
and inquired whether we were sure to be at Nice by eleven ; 
saying tliat he particularly wanted to know, because if we 
reached it by that time he would have to perform mass, and 
must deal with the consecrated wafer, fasting ; whereas, if 
there were no chance of his being in time, he would imme- 
diately breakfast. He made this communication, under the 
idea that the Brave Courier was the captain ; and indeed he 
looked much more like it than anybody else on board. Being 
assured that we should arrive in good time, he fasted, and 
talked, fasting, to everybody, with the most charming good- 
humour ; answering jokes at the expense of friars, with 
other jokes at the expense of laymen, and saying that 
friar as he was, he would engage to take up the two 
strongest men on board, one after the other, with his teeth, 
and carry them along the deck. Nobody gave him the 
opportunity, but I dare say he could have done it; for 
he was a gallant, noble figure of a man, even in the 
Cappuccino dress, which is the ugliest and most ungainly 
that can well be. 

All this had given great delight to the loquacious French- 
man, who gradually patronised the Friar very much, and 
seemed to commiserate him as one who might have been 
born a Frenchman himself, but for an unfortunate destiny. 
Although his patronage was such as a mouse might bestow 
upon a lion, he had a vast opinion of its condescension ; and 
in the warmth of that sentiment, occasionally rose on tiptoe, 
to slap the Friar on the back. 

When the baskets arrived : it being then too late for Mass : 
the Friar went to work bravely . eating prodigiously of the cold 
meat and bread, drinking deep draughts of the wine, smoking 
cigars, taking snuif, sustaining an uninterrupted conversation 
with all hands, and occasionally running to the boat's sido 
and liailing somebody on sliore with the intelligence that we 
must be got out of this quarantine somehow or other, as ho 
liad to take pai-t in a great religious procession in the 



NICE HARBOUE. 63 

afternoon. After tMs, he would come back, laugliing* lustily 
fi'orti pure good humour : while the Frenchman wrinkled his 
sm.all face into ten thousand creases, and said how droll it 
was, and what a brave boy was that Friar ! At length the 
heat of the sun without, and of the wine within, made the 
Frenchman sleepy. So, in the noontide of his patronage of 
his gigantic protege, he lay down among the wool, and began 
to snore. 

It was four o'clock before we were released ; and the 
Frenchman, dirty and woolly, and snuffy, was still sleeping 
when the Friar went ashore. As soon as we were free, we all 
hurried away, to wash and dress, that we might make a 
decent appearance at the Procession; and I saw no more 
of the Frenchman until we took up our station in the main 
street to see it pass, when he squeezed himself into a 
front place, elaborately renovated; threw back his little 
coat, to show a broad-barred velvet waistcoat, sprinkled all 
over with stars ; and adjusted himself and his cane so 
as utterly to bewilder and transfix the Friar, when he should 
appear. 

The procession was a very long one, and included an 
immense number of people divided into small parties ; each 
party chanting nasally, on its own account, vrithout reference 
to any other, and producing a most dismal result. There 
were angels, crosses. Virgins carried on flat boards surrounded 
by Cupids, crowns, saints, missals, infantry, tapers, monks, 
nuns, relics, dignitaries of the church in green hats, walking 
under crimson parasols : and, here and there, a species of 
sacred street-lamp hoisted on a pole. We looked out anxiously 
for the Cappuccini, and presently their brown robes and corded 
girdles were seen coming on, in a body. 

I observed the little Frenchman chuckle over the idea that 
when the Friar saw him in the broad-barred waistcoat, he 
would mentally exclaim, '' Is that my Patron ! That dis- 
tinguished man ! " and woidd be covered with confusion. Ah ! 
never was the Frenchman so deceived. As oiu' friend the 
Cappuccino advanced, with folded arms, he looked straight 
into the visage of the little Frenchman, with a bland, serene, 
composed abstraction, not to be described. There was not 
the faintest trace of recognition or amusement on his features ; 
not the smallest consciousness of bread and meat, wine, snuff, 
or cigars. " C'est lui-meme," I heard the little Frenchman 



Si PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

say, in some doubt. Oh yes, it was himself. It was not his 
brother or his nephew, very like him. It was he. He walked 
in great state : being one of the Superiors of the Order : and 
looked his part to admiration. There never was anything so 
perfect of its kind as the contemplative way in which he 
allowed his placid gaze to rest on us, his late companions, as 
if he had never seen us in his life and didn't see us then. 
The Frenchman, quite humbled, took off his hat at last, but 
the Friar still passed on, with the same imperturbable serenity; 
and the broad-barred waistcoat, fading into the crowd, waa 
seen no more. 

The procession wound up with a discharge of musketry 
that shook all the windows in the town. Next afternoon wo 
started for Genoa, by the famed Cornice Road. 

The half-French, half-Italian Vetturino, who undertook, 
with his little rattling carriage and pair, to convey us thither 
in three days, was a careless, good-looking fellow, whose 
light-heartedness and singing propensities knew no bounds as 
long as we went on smoothly. So long, he had a word and a 
smile, and a flick of his whip, for all the peasant girls, and 
odds and ends of the Sonnambula for all the echoes. So 
long, he went jingling through every little village, with bells 
on his horses and rings in his ears : a very meteor of gallantry 
and cheerfulness. But, it was highly characteristic to see liim 
under a slight reverse of circumstances, when, in one part of 
the journey, we came to a narrow place where a waggon had 
broken down and stopped up the road. His hands were twined 
in his hair immediately, as if a combination of all the direst 
accidents in life had suddenly fallen on his devoted head. He 
swore in French, prayed in Italian, and went up and down, 
beating his feet on the ground in a very ecstasy of despair. 
There were various carters and mule-drivers assembled round 
the broken waggon, and at last some man, of an original turn 
of mind, proposed that a general and joint effort should be 
made to get things to-rights again, and clear the way — an idea 
which I verily believe would never have presented itself to 
our friend, though we had remained there until now. It was 
done at no great cost of labour ; but at every pause in 
the doing, his hands were wound in his hair again, as 
if there were no ray of hope to lighten his misery. The 
moment he was on his box once more, and clattering 
briskly down hiU, he returned to the Sonnambula and the 



CORNICE ROAD. ^^ 

Peasant girls, as if it were not in tlie power of misfortune to 
depress him. 

Much of the romance of the beautiful towns and villages 
on this beautiful road, disappears when they are entered, for 
many of them are very miserable. The streets are narrow, 
dark, and dirty ; the inhabitants lean and squalid ; and the 
withered old women, with their wiry grey hair twisted up 
into a knot on the top of the head, like a pad to carry loads 
on, are so intensely ugly, both along the Riviera, and in 
Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim door-ways 
with their spindles, or crooning together in by corners, they 
are like a population of Witches — except that they certainly 
are not to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of 
cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold 
wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means 
ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated 
pigs, with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down 
by their own tails. 

These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however : 
nestling, with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees 
on steep-hill sides, or built upon the brink of noble bays : are 
charming. The vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and beau- 
tiful, and the Palm tree makes a novel feature in the novel 
scenery. In one town, San Remo — a most extraordinary place, 
built on gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble under- 
neath the whole town — there are pretty terrace gardens ; in 
other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights' hammers, and 
the building of small vessels on the beach. In some of 
the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. 
In every case, each little group of houses presents, in the 
distance, some enchanting confusion of picturesque and 
fanciful shapes. 

The road itself — now high above the glittering sea, which 
breaks against the foot of the precipice : now turning inland 
to sweep the shore of a bay : now crossing the stony bed of 
a mountain stream: now low down on the beach : now winding 
among riven rocks of many forms and colours : now chequered 
by a solitary ruined tower, one of a chain of towers built, in 
old time, to protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary 
Corsaii's — presents new beauties every moment. When its 
own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long 
line of suburb, lying on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, then, 



56 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

the changing glimpses of that noble city and its harhouT, 
awaken a new source of interest ; freshened by every huge, 
unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts : and coming 
to its climax when the city gate is reached, and all Genoa 
with its beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hiUs, bursts 
proudly on the view. 



TO PAEMA, MODENA, AND BOLOGNA. 



I ■ STUOLLED away from Genoa on the 6tli of November, 

bound for a good many places (England among them), but 
first for Piacenza ; for which, town I started in the coupe of a 
machine something like a travelling caravan, in company with 
the Brave Courier, and a lady with a large dog, who howled 
dolefully, at intervals, all night. It was very wet, and very 
cold ; very dark, and very dismal ; we travelled at the rate of 
barely four miles an hour, and stopped nowhere for refresh- 
ment. At ten o'clock next morning, we changed coaches at 
Alessandria, where we were packed up in another coach (the 
body whereof would have been small for a fly), in company 
with a very old priest ; a young Jesuit, his companion — who 
carried their breviaries and other books, and who, in the 
exertion of getting into the coach, had made a gash of pink 
leg between his black stocking and his black knee-shorts, 
that reminded one of Hamlet in Ophelia's closet, only it was 
visible on both legs — a provincial Avvocato ; and a gentleman 
with a red nose that had an uncommon and singular sheen 
upon it, which I never observed in the human subject before. 
In this way we travelled on, until four o'clock in the afternoon ; 
the roads being still very heavy, and the coach very slow. To 
mend the matter, the old priest was troubled with cramps in 
his legs, so that he had to give a terrible yell every ten minutes 
or so, and be hoisted out by the united efforts of the company ; 
the coach always stopping for him, with great gravity. This 
disorder, and the roads, formed the main subject of conversa- 
tion. Finding, in the afternoon, that the coupe had discharged 
two people, and had only one passenger inside — a monstrous 
ugly Tuscan, with a great purple moustache, of which no man 
could see the ends when he had his hat on — I took advantage 
of its better accommodation, and in company with this gen- 
tleman (who was very conversational and good-humoured) 



58 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

travelled on, until nearly eleven o'clock at night, wlien th.e 
driver reported that he couldn't think of going any farther, 
and we accordingly made a halt at a place called Stradella. 

The inn was a series of strange galleries surrounding a 
yard ; where our coach, and a waggon or two, and a lot of 
fowls, and firewood, were all heaped up together, higgledy- 
piggledy ; so that you didn't know, and couldn't have taken 
your oath, which was a fowl and which was a cart. We fol- 
lowed a sleepy man with a flaring torch, into a great, cold 
room, where there were two immensely broad beds, on what 
looked like two immensely broad deal dining-tables ; another 
deal table of similar dimensions in the middle of the bare 
floor ; four windows ; and two chairs. Somebody said it was 
my room ; and I walked up and down it, for half an hour or 
so, staring at the Tuscan, the old priest, the young priest, 
and the Awocato (Red-Nose lived in the town, and had gone 
home), who sat upon the beds, and stared at me in return. 

The rather dreary whimsicality of this stage of the pro- 
ceedings, is interrupted by an announcement from the Brave 
(he has been cooking) that supper is ready ; and to the priest's 
chamber (the next room and the counterpart of mine) we all 
adjoui'n. The first dish is a cabbage, boiled with a great 
quantity of rice in a tureen full of water, and flavoured with 
cheese. It is so hot, and we are so cold, that it appears 
almost jolly. The second dish is some little bits of pork, 
fried with pigs' kidneys. The third, two red fowls. The 
fourth, two little red turkeys. The fifth, a huge stew of garlic 
and truffles, and I don't know what else ; and this concludes 
the entertainment. 

Before I can sit down in my own chamber, and think it of 
the dampest, the door opens, and the Brave comes moving in, 
in the middle of such a quantity of fuel that he looks like 
Birnam Wood taking a winter walk. He kindles this heap in 
a twinkling, and produces a jorum of hot brandy and water ; 
for that bottle of liis keeps company with the seasons, and 
now holds nothing but the purest eau de vie. When he has 
accomplished this feat, he retires for the night ; and I hear 
him, for an hour afterwards, and indeed until I fall asleep, 
making jokes in some out-house (apparently under the pillow), 
where he is smoking cigars with a party of confidential 
friends. He never was in the house in his life before ; but 
he knows everybody everywhere, before he has been anj'where 



STRADELLA. 59 

^Ye minutes ; and is certain to have attracted to himself, in the 
meantime, the enthusiastic devotion of the whole establishment. 

This is at twelve o'clock at nig'ht. At four o'clock next 
morning, he is up again, fresher than a new-blown rose ; 
making blazing fires without the least authority from the 
landlord; producing mugs of scalding coffee when nobody 
else can get anything but cold water ; and going out into the 
dark streets, and roaring for fresh milk, on the chance of 
somebody with a cow getting up to supply it. While the 
horses are *' coming," I stumble out into the town too. It 
seems to be all one little Piazza, with a cold damp wind blow- 
ing in and out of the arches, alternately, in a sort of pattern. 
But it is profoundly dark, and raining heavily ; and I shouldn't 
know it to-morrow, if I were taken there to try. Which. 
Heaven forbid ! 

The horses arrive in about an hour. In the interval, the 
driver swears : sometimes Christian oaths, sometimes Pagan 
oaths. Sometimes, when it is a long, compound oath, he 
begins with Christianity and merges into Paganism. Various 
messengers are despatched ; not so much after the horses, as 
after each other ; for the first messenger never comes back, 
and all the rest imitate him. At length the horses appear, 
surrounded by all the messengers ; some kicking them, and 
some dragging them, and all shouting abuse to them. Then, 
the old priest, the young priest, the Awocato, the Tuscan, 
and all of us, take our places ; and sleepy voices proceeding 
from the doors of extraordinary hutches in divers parts of the 
yard, cry out " Addio corriere mio ! Buon' viaggio, corriere! " 
Salutations which the courier, with his face one monstrous 
grin, returns in like manner as we go jolting and wallowing 
away, through the mud. 

At Piacenza, which was four or five hours' jouraey from 
the inn at Stradella, we broke up our little company before 
the hotel door, with divers manifestations of friendly feeling 
on all sides. The old priest was taken with the cramp again, 
before he had got haK-vf ay down the street ; and the 3' oung 
priest laid the bundle of books on a door step, while he duti- 
fully rubbed the old gentleman's logs. The client of the 
Awocato was waiting for him at the yard-gate, and kissed 
him on each cheek, with such a resounding smack, that I am 
afraid he had either a very bad case, or a scantily-furnished 
purse. The Tuscan, with a cigar in his mouth, went loitering 



60 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

off, carrj'-ing his hat in his hand that he might the better trail np 
the ends of his dishevelled moustache. And the Brave Coiu'ier, 
as he and I strolled away to look about us, began immediately 
to entertain me "with the private histories and family affairs 
of the whole party. 

A brown, decayed, old town, Piacenza is. A deserted, soli- 
tary, grass-grown place, with ruined ramparts ; half filied-up 
trenches, which afford a frowsy pasturage to the lean kine 
that wander about them ; and streets of stern houses, moodily 
frowning at the other houses over the way. The sleepiest 
and shabbiest of soldiery go wandering about, with the double 
curse of laziness and poverty, uncouthly wrinkling their mis- 
fitting regimentals ; the dirtiest of children play with their 
impromptu toys (pigs and mud) in the feeblest of gutters ; and 
the gauntest of dogs trot in and out of the dullest of archways, 
in perpetual search of something to eat, which they never 
seem to find. A mysterious and solemn Palace, guarded by 
two colossal statues, twin Genii of the place, stands gravely in 
the midst of the idle town ; and the king with the marble 
legs, who flourished in the time of the thousand and one 
Kights, might live contentedly inside of it, and never have 
the energy, in his upper half of flesh and blood, to want to 
come out. 

What a strange, half-sorrowful and half- delicious doze it is, 
to ramble through these places gone to sleep and basking in 
the sun ! Each, in its turn, appears to be, of all the mouldy, 
dreary, God-forgotten towns in the wide world, the chief. 
Sitting on this hillock where a bastion used to be, and where 
a noisy fortress was, in the time of the old Roraan station 
here, I become aware that I have never known till now, what 
it is to be lazy. A dormouse must surely be in very much 
the same condition before he retires under the wool in his 
cage ; or a tortoise before he biu-ies himself. I feel that I am 
getting rusty. That any attempt to think, would be accom- 
panied with a creaking noise. That there is nothing, any- 
where, to be done, or needing to be done. That there is no 
more human progress, motion, eflbrt, or advancement, of any 
kind beyond this. That the wliole scheme stopped here cen- 
tui'ics ago, and lay down to rest until the Day of Judgment. 

Never wliile the Brave Courier lives ! Behold him jingling 
out of Piacenza, and staggering this way, in the tallest post- 
ing-chaise ever seen, so that he looks out of the front window 



PABMA. 61 

as if lie were peeping over a garden wall ; while the postilion, 
concentrated essence of all the shabbiness of Italy, pauses for 
a moment in his animated conversation, to touch his hat to a 
blunt-nosed little Virgin, hardly less shabby than himself, 
enshrined in a plaster Punch's show outside the town. 

In Genoa, and thereabouts, they train the vines on trellis- 
work, supported on square clumsy pillars, which, in them- 
selves, are anything but picturesque. But, here, they twine 
them around trees, and let them trail among the hedges ; and 
the vineyards are full of trees, regularly planted for this 
purpose, each with its own vine twining and clustering about 
it. Their leaves are now of the brightest gold and deepest 
red; and never was anything so enchantingly graceful and 
full of beauty. Through miles of these delightful forms and 
colours, the road winds its way. The wild festoons, the 
elegant wreaths, and crowns, and garlands of all shapes ; the 
fairy nets flung over great trees, and making them prisoners in 
sport ; the tumbled heaps and mounds of exquisite shapes 
upon the ground ; how rich and beautiful they are ! And 
every now and then, a long, long line of trees, will be all 
bound and garlanded together : as if they had taken hold of 
one another, and were coming dancing down the field ! 

Parma has cheerful, stirring streets, for an Italian town ; 
and consequently is not so characteristic as many places of less 
note. Always excepting the retired Piazza, where the 
Cathedral, Baptistery, and Campanile — ancient buildings, of 
a sombre brown, embellished with innumerable grotesque 
monsters and dreamy-looking creatures carved in marble and 
red stone — are clustered in a noble and magnificent repose. 
Their silent presence was only invaded, when I saw them, by 
the twittering of the many birds that were flying in and out 
of the crevices in the stones and little nooks in the architec- 
ture, where they had made their nests. They were busy, 
rising from the cold shade of Temples made with hands, into 
the sunny air of Heaven. Not so the worshippers within, 
who were listening to the same drowsy chaunt, or kneeling 
before the same kinds of images and tapers, or whispering, 
with their heads bowed do^^Ti, in the very selfsame dark 
confessionals, as I had left in Genoa and everywhere else. 

The decayed and mutilated paintings with which this church 
is covered, have, to my thinking, a remarkably mournful and 
depressing influence. It is miserable to see great works of 



62 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

art — sometliing of the Souls of Painters — perishing and 
fading away, like human forms. This cathedral is odorous 
with the rotting of Correggio's frescoes in the Cupola. 
Heaven knows how beautiful they may have been at one time. 
Connoisseurs fall into raptures with them now ; but such a 
labyrinth of arms and legs : such heaps of foreshortened 
limbs, entangled and involved and jumbled together : no 
operative surgeon, gone mad, could imagine in his wildest 
delirium. 

There is a very interesting subterranean church here ; the 
roof supported by marble pillars, behind each of which there 
seemed to be at least one beggar in ambush : to say nothing 
of the tombs and secluded altars. From every one of these 
lurking-places, such crowds of phantom-looking men and 
women, leading other men and women with twisted limbs, or 
chattering jaws, or paralytic gestures, or idiotic heads, or 
some other sad infirmity, came hobbling out to beg, that if 
the ruined frescoes in the cathedral above, had been suddenly 
animated, and had retired to this lower church, they could 
hardly have made a greater confusion, or exhibited a more 
confounding display of arms and legs. 

There is Petrarch's Monument, too; and there is the 
Baptistery, with its beautiful arches and immense font ; and 
there is a gallery containing some very remarkable pictiu-es, 
whereof a few were being copied by hairy-faced artists, with 
little velvet caps more off their heads than on. There is the 
Farnese Palace, too ; and in it one of the dreariest spectacles 
of decay that ever was seen — a grand, old, gloomy theatre, 
mouldering away. 

It is a large wooden structure, of the horse-shoe shape ; the 
lower seats arranged upon the Roman plan, but above them, 
great heavy chambers rather than boxes, where the Nobles 
sat, remote, in their proud state. Such desolation as has 
fallen on this theatre, enhanced in the sj)ectator's fancy by its 
gay intention and design, none but w^orms can be familiar 
with. A hundi'ed and ten years have passed, since any piny 
was acted here. The sky shines in through the gashes in the 
roof; the boxes are dropping down, wasting away, and only 
tenanted by rats ; damp and mildew smear the faded coloui's, 
and make spectral maps upon the panels ; lean rags are 
dangling down where there were gay festoons on the Prosce- 
nium ; the stage has rotted so, that a naiTow wooden gallery 



MODENA. 63 

is thrown across it, or it would sink beneatli tlie tread, and 
bury tlie visitor in the gloomy depth, beneath. The desolation 
and decay impress themselves on all the senses. The air ha3 
a mouldering smell, and an earthy taste; any stray outer 
sounds that straggle in with some lost sunbeam, are muffled 
and heavy; and the worm, the maggot, and the rot have 
changed the surface of the wood beneath the touch, as time 
will seam and roughen a smooth hand. If ever Ghosts act 
plays, they act them on this ghostly stage. 

It was most delicious weather, when we came into INIodena, 
where the darkness of the sombre colonnades over the foot- 
ways skirting the main street on either side, was made 
refreshing and agreeable by the bright sky, so wonderfully 
blue. I passed from all the glory of the day, into a dim 
cathedral, where high mass was performing, feeble tapers 
were burning, people were kneeling in all directions before 
all manner of shrines, and officiating priests were crooning 
the usual chaunt, in the usual low, dull, drawling, melancholy 
tone. 

Thinking how strange it was, to find, in every stagnant 
town, this same Heart beating with the same monotonous 
pulsation, the centre of the same torpid, listless, system, I 
came out by another door, and was suddenly scared to death 
by a blast from the shrillest trumpet that ever was blown. 
Immediately, came tearing round the corner, an equestrian 
company from Paris : marshalling themselves under the walla 
of the church, and flouting, with their horses' heels, the 
griffins, lions, tigers, and other monsters in stone and marble, 
decorating its exterior. First, there came a stately nobleman 
with a great deal of hair, and no hat, bearing an enormous 
banner, on which was inscribed, Mazeppa ! to-night ! 
Then, a Mexican chief, with a great pear-shaped club on his 
shoulder, like Hercules. Then, six or eight Roman chariots : 
each with a beautiful lady in extremely short petticoats, and 
unnaturally pink tights, erect within : shedding beaming looks 
upon the crowd, in which there was a latent expression of 
discomposure and anxiety, for which I couldn't account, until, 
as the open back of each chariot presented itself, I saw the 
immense difficulty with which the pink legs maintained their 
perpendicular, over the uneven pavement of the town : which 
gave me quite a new idea of the ancient Romans and 
Britons. The procession was brought to a close, by some 



64 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

dozen indomitaHe Tvarriors of dijSerent nations, riding two 
and two, and liaughtily surveying the tame pcfpiilation of 
Modena : among whom, however, they occasionally con- 
descended to scatter largesse in the foim of a few handbills. 
After caracolling among the lions and tigers, and proclaiming 
that evening's entertainments with blast of trumpet, it then 
filed off, by the other end of the square, and left a new ^d 
greatly increased dolness behind. 

AMien the procession had so entirely passed away, that the 
shrill trumpet was mild in the distance, and the tail of the 
last horse was hopelessly round the corner, the people who 
had come out of the church to stare at it, went back again. 
But one old lady, kneeling on the pavement within, near 
the door, had seen it all, and had been immensely interested, 
without getting up ; and this old lady's eye, at that juncture, 
I happened to catch : to our mutual confusion. She cut our 
embarrassment very short, however, by crossing herself 
devoutly, and going down, at full length, on her face, before 
a figure in a fancy petticoat and a gilt cro\\Ti ; which was so 
like one of the procession-figiures, that perhaps at this hour 
she may think the whole appearance a celestial vision. Any- 
how, I must certainly have forgiven her her interest in the 
Circus, though I had been her Father Confessor. 

There was a little fiery-eyed old man with a crooked 
shoulder, in the cathedral, who took it very ill that I made 
no effort to see the bucket (kept in an old tower) which 
the people of Modena took away from the people of Bologna 
in the fourteenth century, and about which there was war 
made and a mock-heroic poem by Tassone, too. Being quite 
content, however, to look at the outside of the tower, and 
feast, in imagination, on the bucket within ; and preferring 
to loiter in the shade of the tall Campanile, and about the 
cathedral ; I have no personal knowledge of this bucket, even 
at the present time. 

Indeed, we were at Bologna, before the little old man 
(or the Guide -Book) would have considered that we had half 
done justice to the wonders of Modena. But it is such a 
delight to me to leave new scenes behind, and still go on, 
encountering newer scenes — and, moreover, I have such a 
perverse disposition in respect of siglits that are cut, and 
dried, and dictated — that I fear I sin against similar autho- 
rities in every place I visit. 



BOLOaNA. 65 

Be tMs as it may, in the pleasant Cemetery at Bologna I 
foimd myself walking next Sunday morning, among the 
stately marble tombs and colonnades, in company with, a crowd 
of Peasants, and escorted by a little Cicerone of that town, 
who was excessively anxious for the honor of the place, and 
most solicitous to divert my attention from the bad monu- 
ments : whereas he was never tired of extolling the good 
ones. Seeing this little man (a good-humoured little man he 
was, who seemed to have nothing in his face but shining 
teeth and eyes) looking, wistfully, at a certain plot of grass, 
I asked him who was buried there. " The poor people, 
Signer e," he said, with a shrug and a smile, and stopping to 
look back at me — for he always went on a little before, 
and took off his hat to introduce every new monument. 
"Only the poor. Sign ore ! It's very cheerful. It's very 
lively. How green it is, how cool ! It 's like a meadow ! 
There are five," — holding up all the fingers of his right hand 
to express the number, which an Italian peasant will always 
do, if it be within the compass of his ten fingers, — " there 
are five of my little children buried there, Signore ; just 
there ; a little to the right. Well ! Thanks to God ! It 's 
very cheerful. How green it is, how cool it is ! It 's quite a 
meadow ! " 

He looked me very hard in the face, and seeing I was 
sorry for him, took a pinch of snuff (every Cicerone takes 
snuff), and made a little bow ; partly in deprecation of his 
having alluded to such a subject, and partly in memory of the 
children and of his favourite saint. It was as unaffected and 
as perfectly natural a little bow, as ever man made. Immedi- 
ately afterwards, he took his hat off altogether, and begged to 
introduce me to the next monument; and his eyes and his 
teeth shone brighter than before. 



THROUGH BOLOGNA AND FERRARA- 



There was such a very smart official in attendance at the 
Cemetery where the little Cicerone had buried his childreii, 
that when the little Cicerone suggested to me, in a whisper, 
that there would be no offence in presenting this officer, in 
return for some slight extra service, with a cou^^le of pauls 
(about tenpence, English money), I looked incredulously at 
his. cocked hat, wash-leather gloves, well-made uniform, and 
dazzling buttons, and rebuked the little Cicerone with a grave 
sliake of the head. For, in splendour of appearance, he was 
a': least equal to the Deputy Usher of the Black Rod ; and the 
idea of his carrying,, as Jeremy Diddler would say, ''such 
a thing as tenpence" away with him, seemed monstrous. 
He took it in excellent part, however, when I made bold to 
give it him, and pulled off his cocked hat with a flourish 
that would have been a bargain at double the money. 

It seemed to be his duty to describe the monuments to the 
people — at all events he was doing so ; and when I compared 
him, like Gulliver in Brobdignag, *' with the Institutions of 
ray own beloved country, I could not refrain from tears of 
pride and exultation." He had no pace at all; no more than 
a tortoise. He loitered as the people loitered, that they might 
gratify their curiosity ; and positively allowed them, now and 
then, to read the inscriptions on the tombs. He was neither 
shabby, nor insolent, nor churlish, nor ignorant. He spoke 
his own language with perfect propriety, and seemed to con- 
sider himself, in his way, a kind of teacher of the people, and 
to entertain a just respect both for himself and them. They 
would no more have such a man for a Verger in Westminster 
Abbey, than they would let the people in (as they do at 
Bologna) to see the monuments for nothing.^'' 

Again, an ancient sombre town, under the brilliant sky; 

* A far moi-e liberal and just recognition of the public haa arisen in West- 
minster Abbey since this was written. 



BOLOGNA. 67 

wrfcli heavy arcades over the footways of the older streets, and 
lighter and more cheerful archways in the newer portions of 
the to^Ti. Again, brown piles of sacred buildings, with more 
birds flying in and out of chinlis in the stones; and more 
snarling monsters for the bases of the pillars. Again, rich 
churches, drowsy masses, cui-ling incense, tinkling bells, 
priests in bright vestments : pictures, tapers, laced altar 
cloths, crosses, images, and artificial flowers. 

There is a grave and learned air about the city, and a 
pleasant gloom upon it, that would leave it, a distinct and 
separate impression in the mind, among a crowd of cities, 
though it were not still further marked in the traveller's 
remembrance by the two brick leaning towers (suihciently 
unsightly in themselves, it m.u.st be acknowledged), incHning 
cross- wise as if they were bowing stiffly to each other — a most 
extraordinary termination to the perspective of some of the 
narrow streets. The colleges, and churches too, and palaces : 
and above all the academy of Fine Arts, where there are a 
host of interesting pictures, especially by Guido, Domenichino, 
and LuDOVico Cajracci : give it a place of its own in the 
memory. Even though these were not, and there were no- 
thing else to remember it by, the great Meridian on the pave- 
ment of the church, of San Petronio, where the sunbeams 
mark the time among the kneeling people, would give it a 
fanciful and pleasant interest. 

Bologna being very full of tourists, detained there by an 
inundation which rendered the road to Florence impassable, I 
was quartered up at the top of an hotel, in an out-of-the-way 
room which I never could find : containing a bed, big enough 
for a boarding-school, which I couldn't fall asleep in. The 
chief among the waiters who visited this lonely retreat, where 
there was no other company but the swallows in the broad 
eaves over the window, was a man of one idea in connection 
with the English ; and the subject of this harmless mono- 
mania, was Lord Byron. I made the discovery by accident- 
ally remarking to him, at breakfast, that the matting with 
which the floor was covered, was very comfortable at that 
season, when he immediately replied that Milor Beeron had 
been much attached to that kind of matting. Observing, at 
the same moment, that I took no milk, he exclaimed with 
enthusiasm, that Milor Beeron had never touched it. At fii'st, 
I took it for granted, in my innocence, that he had been one 

p2 



G& PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

of tlie Beeron servants ; but no, lie said no, he was in the 
habit of speaking about mj^ Lord, to English gentlemen ; that 
was all. He knew all about him, he said. In proof of it, he 
connected him with every possible topic, from the Monte 
Pulciano wine at dinner (which was grown on an estate he 
had owned), to the big bed itself, which was the very model 
of his. When I left the inn, he coupled with his final bow in 
the yard, a parting assurance that the road by which I was 
going, had been Milor Beeron' s favourite ride ; and before the 
horse's feet had well begun to clatter on the pavement, he ran 
briskly up-stairs again, I dare say to tell some other English- 
man in some other solitary room that the guest who had just 
departed was Lord Beeron' s living image. 

I had entered Bologna by night — almost midnight — and 
all along the road thither, after our entrance into the Papal 
territory : which is not, in any part, supremely well governed, 
Saint Peter's keys being rather rusty now : the driver had so 
worried about the danger of robbers in travelling after dark, 
and had so infected the Brave Courier, and the two had been 
so constantly stopping and getting up and down to look after 
a portmanteau which was tied on behind, that I shoiJd have 
felt almost obliged to any one who would have had the goodness 
to take it away. Hciice it was stipulated, that, whenever we 
left Bologna, v/e should start so as not to arrive at Ferrara 
later than eight at night ; and a delightful afternoon and 
evening journey it was, albeit through a flat district which 
gradually became more marshy from the overflow of brooks 
and rivers in the recent heavy rains. 

At simset, when I was walking on alone, while the horses 
rested, I arrived upon a little scene, which, by one of those 
singular mental operations of which we are all conscious, 
seemed perfectly familiar to me, and which I see distinctly 
now. There was not much in it. In the blood-red light, 
there was a moui'nful sheet of water, just stirred by the 
evening wind ; upon its margin a few trees. In the fore- 
ground was a group of silent peasant-girls leaning over the 
parapet of a little bridge, and looking, now up at the sky, 
now down into the water; in the distance, a deep bell; the 
shadow of approaching night on ever3i:liing. If I had been 
murdered there, in some former life, I coidd not have seemed 
to remember the place more thoroughly, or with a more em- 
phatic cliilling of the blood; and the real remembrance of 



FERRARA. 69 

it acquired in tliat minute, is so strengthened hj tlie imaginary 
recollection, that I hardly think I could forget it. 

More solitary, more depopulated, more deserted, old 
Ferrara, than any city of the solemn brotherhood ! The 
grass so grows up in the silent streets, that anyone might 
make hay there, literally, while the sun shines. But the sun 
shines with diminished cheerfulness in grim Ferrara ; and the 
people are so few who pass and repass through the publi'^ 
places, that the flesh of its inhabitants might be grass indeed, 
and growing in the squares. 

I wonder why the head coppersmith in an Italian town, 
always lives next door to the Hotel, or opposite : making the 
visitor feel as if the beating hammers were his own heart, 
palpitating with a deadly energy ! I wonder why jealous 
corridors surround the bedroom on all sides, and fill it with 
unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and will not open, and 
abut on pitchy darkness ! I wonder why it is not enough 
that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all 
night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in 
the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the 
wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in 
his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in ! I 
wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no 
effect but an agony of heat when they are lighted and re- 
plenished, and an agony of cold and suffocation at all other 
times ! I wonder, above all, why it is the great feature of 
domestic architecture in Itahan inns, that all the fire goes up 
the chimney, except the smoke ! 

The answer matters little. Coppersmiths, doors, portholes, 
smoke, and faggots, are welcome to me. Give me the smiling 
face of the attendant, man or woman ; the courteous manner ; 
the amiable desire to please and to be pleased ; the light- 
hearted, pleasant, simple air — so many jewels set in dirt — and 
I am theirs again to-morrow ! 

Akiosto's house, Tasso's prison, a rare old gothic cathedral, 
and more churches of course, are the sights of Ferrara. But 
the long silent streets, and the dismantled palaces, where ivy 
waves in lieu of banners, and where rank weeds are slowly 
creeping up the long-untrodden stairs, are the best sights 
of aU. 

The aspect of this dreary town, half an hour before simrise 
one fine morning, when I left it, was as picturesque aa it 



70 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

seemed uni'eal and spectral. It was no matter tliat the people 
were not yet out of bed ; for if they had all been up and busy, 
they would have made but little difference in that desert of a 
place. It was best to see it, without a single fignre in the 
picture ; a city of the dead, without one solitary survivor. 
Pestilence might have ravaged streets, squares, and market- 
places ; and sack and siege have ruined the old houses, bat- 
tered down their doors and windows, and made breaches in 
their roofs. In one part, a great tower rose into the airj 
the only landmark in the melancholy view. In another, a 
prodigious Castle, with a moat about it, stood aloof : a sullen 
city in itself. In the black dungeons of this castle, Parisina 
and her lover were beheaded in the dead of night. The red 
Hght, beginning to shine when I looked back upon it, stained 
its walls without, as they have, many a time, been stained 
within, in old days ; but for any sign of life they gave, the 
castle and the city might have been avoided by all human 
creatures, from the moment when the axe went down upon the 
last of the two lovers : and might have never vibrated to 
another sound 

Beyond the blow that to the block 

Pierced through with forced and sullen shock. 

Coming to the Po, which was greatly swollen, and running 
fiercely, we crossed it by a floating bridge of boats, and so 
came into the Austrian territory, and resumed our journey : 
through a country of which, for some miles, a great part 
was under water. The Brave Courier and the soldiery had 
first quarrelled, for half an hour or more, over oui- eternal 
passport. But this was a daily relaxation with the Brave, 
who was always stricken deaf when shabby functionaries in 
uniform came, as they constantly did come, plunging out of 
wooden boxes to look at it — or in other words to beg — and 
who, stone deaf to my entreaties that the man might have a 
trifle given him, and we resume our journey in peace, was 
wont to sit reviling the functionary in broken English : while 
the unfortunafe man's face was a portrait of mental agony 
framed in the coach window, from his perfect ignorance of 
what was being said to his disparagement. 

There was a Postilion, in the course of this day's journey, 
as wild and savagely good-lookiDg a vagabond as you would 
desire to see. He was a tall, stout-made, dai-k-complexioned 



FERRARA. 71 

fellow, witli a profusion of shaggy black hair hanging all over 
his face, and great black whiskers stretching down his tliroat. 
His dress was a torn suit of rifle green, garnished here and 
there with red ; a steeple-crowned hat, innocent of nap, with 
a broken and bedraggled feather stuck in the band ; and a 
flaming red neck-kerchief hanging on his shoulders. He was 
not in the saddle, but reposed, quite at his ease, on a sort 
of low footboard in front of the postchaise, down among the 
horses' tails — convenient for having his brains kicked out, at 
any moment. To tliis Brigand, the Brave Courier, when we 
were at a reasonable trot, happened to suggest the practica- 
bility of going faster. He received the proposal with a 
perfect yell of derision ; brandished his whip about his head 
(such a whip ! it was more like a home-made bow) ; flung up 
his heels, much higher than the horses ; and disappeared, 
in a paroxysm, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the axle- 
tree. I fully expected to see him lying in the road, a 
hundred yards behind, but up came the steeple-crowned hat 
again, next minute, and he was seen reposiog, as on a sofa, 
entertaining himself with the idea, and crying, '' Ha ha ! what 
next. Oh the devil I Faster too ! Shoo — hoo — o — o ! " 
(This last ejaculation, an inexpressibly defiant hoot.) Being 
anxious to reach our immediate destination that night, I ven- 
tured, by-and-by, to repeat the experiment on my own 
account. It produced exactly the same efifect. Round flew 
the whip with the same scornful flourish, up came the heels, 
down went the steeple-crowned hat, and presently he re- 
appeared, reposing as before and saying to himself, '' Ha 
ha ! what next ! Faster too. Oh the devil ! Shoo — ^hoo 



AN ITALIAN DREAM. 



I HAD been travelling, for some days ; resting very little 
in tlie night, and never in the day. The rapid and un- 
broken succession of novelties that had passed before me, 
came back like half-formed dreams : and a crowd of objects 
wandered in the greatest confusion through my mind, as I 
travelled on, by a solitary road. At intervals, some one among 
them would stop, as it were, in its restless flitting to and fro, 
and enable me to look at it, quite steadily, and behold it in 
full distinctness. After a few moments, it would dissolve, 
like a view in a magic-lantern; and while I saw some part 
of it quite plainly, and some faintly, and some not at 
all, would show me another of the many places I had 
lately seen, lingering behind it, and coming through it. 
This was no sooner visible than, in its tui-n, it melted into 
something else. 

At one moment, I was standing again, before the brown 
old rugged churches of Modena. As I recognised the curious 
piUars with grim monsters for their bases, I seemed to see 
them, standing by themselves in the quiet square at Padua, 
where there were the staid old University, and the figiu-es, 
demurely gowned, grouped here and there in the open space 
about it. Then, I was strolling in the outskirts of that 
pleasant city, admiring the unusual neatness of the dwelling- 
houses, gardens, and orchards, as I had seen them a few 
hours before. In their stead arose, immediately, the two 
towers of Bologna ; and the most obstinate of all these objects, 
failed to hold its ground, a minute, before the monstrous 
moated castle of Ferrara, which, like an illustration to a wild 
romance, came back again in the red sunrise, lording it over 
the solitary, grass-gi'own, witliered town. In short, I had that 
incoherent but delightful jumble in my brain, which travellers 
are apt to have, and aie indolently willing to encoui'age. 



AN ITALIAN DREAM. 73 

Every sliake of the coacli in wMch. I sat, half dozing in the 
dark, appeared to jerk some new recollection out of its place, 
and to jerk some other new recollection into it ; and in this 
state I fell asleep. 

I was awakened after some time (as I thought) by the 
stopping of the coach. ,It was now quite night, and we 
were at the water-side. There lay here, a black boat, with 
a little house or cabin in it of the same mournful colour. 
When I had taken my seat in this, the boat was paddled, 
by two men, towards a great light, lying in the distance on 
the sea. 

Ever and again, there was a dismal sigh of wind. It 
ruffled the water, and rocked the boat, and sent the dark 
clouds flying before the stars. I could not but think how 
strange it was, to be floating away at that hour : leaving the 
land behind, and going on, towards this light upon the sea. 
It soon began to burn brighter ; and from being one light 
became a cluster of tapers, twinkling and shining out of the 
water, as the boat approached towards them by a dreamy kind 
of track, marked out upon the sea by posts and piles. 

"We had floated on, five miles or so, over the dark water, 
when I heard it rippling, in my dream, against some ob- 
struction near at hand. Looking out attentively, I saw, 
through the gloom, a something black and massive — Hke a 
shore, but lying close and flat upon the water, like a raft — 
which we were gliding past. The chief of the two rowers 
said it was a burial-place. 

Full of the interest and wonder which a cemetery lying out 
there, in the lonely sea, inspired, I turned to gaze upon it as 
it should recede in our path, when it was quickly shut out 
from my view. Before I knew by what, or how, I found that 
we were gliding up a street — a phantom street ; the houses 
rising on both sides, from the water, and the black boat 
ghding on beneath their windows. Lights were shining from 
some of these casements, plumbing the depth of the black 
stream with their reflected rays; bu^ all was profoundly 
silent. 

So we advanced into this ghostly city, continuing to hold 
our course through narrow streets and lanes, all filled and 
flowing with water. Some of the corners where our way 
branched off, were so acute and narrow, that it seemed im- 
possible for the long slender boat to turn them; but the 



74 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

rowers, vdth. a low melodious cry of warning, sent it skim- 
ming on, without a pause. Sometimes, the rowers of another 
black boat like our own, echoed the cry, and slackening theii 
speed (as I thought we did ours) would come flitting past us, 
like a dark shadow. Other boats, of the same sombre hue, 
were lying moored, I thought, to painted pillars, near to dark 
mysterious doors that opened straight upon the water. Some 
of these were empty ; in some, the rowers lay asleep ; towards 
one, I saw some figures coming down a gloomy archway from 
the interior of a palace : gaily dressed, and attended by torch- 
bearers. It was but a glimpse I had of them ; for a bridge, 
so low and close upon the boat that it seemed ready to fall 
down and crush us : one of the many bridges that perplexed 
the Dream : blotted them out, instantly. On we went, floating 
towards the heart of this strange place — with water all about 
us where never water was elsewhere — clusters of houses, 
churches, heaps of stately buildings growing out of it — and, 
everywhere, the same extraordinary silence. Presently, we 
shot across a broad and open stream; and passing, as I 
thought, before a spacious paved quay, where the bright 
lamps with which it was illuminated showed long rows of 
arches and pillars, of ponderous construction and great 
strength, but as light to the eye as garlands of hoar-fi'ost or 
gossamer — and where, for the first time, I saw people walking 
— arrived at a flight of steps leading from the water to a large 
mansion, where, having passed through corridors and galleries 
innumerable, I laj down to rest ; listening to the black boats 
stealing up and down below the window on the rippling water, 
till I fell asleep. 

The glory of the day that broke upon me in this Dream ; 
its freshness, motion, buoyancy ; its sparkles of the sun in 
water ; its clear blue sky and rustling air ; no waking words 
can teU. But, from my window, I looked down on boats and 
barks ; on masts, sails, cordage, flags ; on groups of busy 
sailors, working at the cargoes of these vessels ; on wide 
quays, strewn with bales, casks, merchandise of many kinds ; 
on gi-eat ships, lying near at hand in stately indolence ; on 
islands, croAvned with gorgeous domes and turrets : and where 
golden crosses glittered in the light, atop of wondrous churches 
springing from the sea ! Going down upon the margin of 
the green sea, rolling on before the door, and filling all the 
streets, I came upon a place of such surpassing beauty, and 



AN ITALIAN DREAM. 75 

euch grandeur, that all tlie rest was poor and faded, in com- 
parison with, its absorbing loveliness. 

It was a great Piazza, as I thought ; anchored, like all the 
rest, in the deep ocean. On its broad bosom, was a Palace, 
more majestic and magnificent in its old age, than all the 
buildings of the earth, in the high prime and fulness of their 
youth. Cloisters and galleries : so light, they might have 
been the work of fauy hands : so strong that centuries had 
battered them in vain : wound round and round this palace, 
and enfolded it with a Cathedral, gorgeous in the wild 
luxuriant fancies of the East. At no great distance from its 
porch, a lofty tower, standing by itself, and rearing its proud 
head, alone, into the sky, looked out upon the Adriatic sea. 
Near to the margin of the stream, were two ill-omened pillars 
of red granite ; one having on its top, a figure with a sword 
and shield ; the other, a winged lion. Not far from these 
again, a second tower : richest of the rich in all its decorations : 
even here, where all was rich : sustained aloft, a great orb, 
gleaming with gold and deepest blue : the Twelve Signs 
pointed on it, and a mimic sun revolving in its course aroim.d 
them : while above, two bronze giants hammered out the 
hours upon a sounding bell. An oblong square of lofty 
houses of the whitest stone, surrounded by a light and 
beautiful arcade, formed part of this enchanted scene ; and, 
here and there, gay masts for flags rose, tapering, from the 
pavement of the unsubstantial ground. 

I thought I entered the Cathedral, and went in and out 
among its many arches : traversing its whole extent. A 
grand and dreamy structure, of immense proportions ; golden 
with old mosaics ; redolent of perfumes ; dim with the smoke 
of incense ; costly in treasure of precious stones and metals, 
glittering through iron bars ; holy with the bodies of deceased 
saints ; rainbow-hued with windows of stained glass ; dark 
with^carved woods and coloured marbles ; obscure in its vast 
heights, and lengthened distances ; shining with silver lamps 
and winking lights ; unreal, fantastic, solemn, inconceivable 
throughout. I thought I entered the old palace ; pacing 
silent galleries and council-chambers, where the old rulers of 
this mistress of the waters looked sternly out, in pictures, 
from the walls, and where her high-prowed galleys, still 
victorious on canvas, fought and conquered as of old. I 
thought I wandered tlirough its halls of state and triumph — 



76 PICTUEES FROM ITALY 

bare and empty now ! — and musing on its pi'ide and might, 
extinct : for that was past ; all past : heard a voice say, 
" Some tokens of its ancient rule, and some consoling reasons 
for its downfal, may be traced here, yet I " 

I dreamed that I was led on, then, into some jealous rooms, 
communicating with a prison near the palace ; separated from 
it by a lofty bridge crossing a narrow street ; and called, I 
dreamed. The Bridge of Sighs. 

But jSi'st I passed two jagged slits in a stone wall ; the 
lions' mouths — now toothless — where, in the distempered 
horror of my sleep, I thought denunciations of innocent 
men to the old wicked Council, had been dropped through, 
many a time, when the night was dark. So, when I saw 
the council-room to which such prisoners were taken for 
examination, and the door by which they passed out, when 
they were condemned — a door that never closed upon a 
man with life and hope before him — my heart appeared to 
die within me. 

It was smitten harder though, when, torch in hand, ] 
descended from the cheerful day into two ranges, one below 
another, of dismal, awful, horrible stone cells. They were 
quite dark. Each had a loop-hole in its massive wall, where, 
in the old time, every day, a torch was placed — I dreamed — 
to light the prisoner within, for half an hour. The captives, 
by the glimmering of these brief rays, had scratched and cut 
inscriptions in the blackened vaidts. I saw them. For their 
labour with a rusty nail's point, had outlived their agony and 
them, through many generations. 

One cell, I saw, in which no man remained for more than 
four-and-twenty hours; being marked for dead before he 
entered it. Hard by, another, and a dismal one, whereto, at 
midnight, the confessor came — a monk brown-robed, and 
hooded — ghastly in the day, and free bright air, but in the 
midnight of that murky prison, Hope's extinguisher, and 
Murder's herald. I had my foot upon the spot, where, at the 
same dread hour, the sliriven prisoner was strangled; and 
struck my hand upon the guilty door — low browed and stealthy 
— through which the lumpish sack was carried out into a 
boat, and rowed away, and drowned where it was death to 
cast a net. 

Around this dungeon stronghold, and above some part of 
it ; licking the rough walls without, and smearing them with 



AN ITALIAN DREAM. 77 

damp and slime mtliin : stuffing dank weeds and refuse into 
chinks and crevices, as if the very stones and bars had mouths 
to stop : furnishing a smooth road for the removal of the 
bodies of the secret victims of the state — a road so ready that 
it went along with them, and ran before them, like a cruel 
officer — flowed the same water that filled this Dream of mine, 
and made it seem one, even at the time. 

Descending from the palace by a staircase, called, I thought, 
the Giant's — I had some imaginary recollection of an old man 
abdicating, coming, more slowly and more feebly, down it, 
when he heard the bell, proclaiming his successor — I glided 
off, in one of the dark boats, until we came to an old arsenal 
guarded by four marble lions. To make my Dream more 
monstrous and unlikely, one of these had words and sentences 
upon its body, inscribed there, at an unknown time, and in an 
unknown language ; so that their purport was a mystery to 
all men. 

There was little sound of hammers in this place for building 
ships, and little work in progress ; for the greatness of the 
city was no more, as I have said. Indeed, it seemed a very 
wreck found drifting on the sea ; a strange fiag hoisted in its 
honourable stations, and strangers standing at its helm. A 
splendid barge in which its ancient chief had gone forth, 
pompously, at certain periods, to wed the ocean, lay here, I 
thought, no more ; but, in its place, there was a tiny m.odel, 
made from recollection like the city's greatness ; and it told of 
what had been (so aie the strong and weak confounded in the 
dust) almost as eloquently as the massive pillars, arches, roofs, 
reared to overshadow stately ships that had no other shadow 
now, upon the water or the earth. 

An armoury was there yet. Plundered and despoiled ; but 
an armoury. With a fierce standard taken from the Turks, 
drooping in the dull air of its cage. Rich suits of mail worn 
by great warriors were hoarded there ; crossbows and bolts ; 
quivers full of arrows ; spears ; swords, daggers, maces, 
shields, and heavy-headed axes. Plates of wrought steel and 
iron, to make the gallant horse a monster cased in metal 
scales ; and one spring- weapon (easy to be carried in the 
breast) designed to do its office noiselessly, and made for 
shooting men vdth poisoned darts. 

One press or case I saw, f'all of accursed instruments of 
torture : horribly contrived to cramp, and pinch, and grind, 



78 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and crush men's bones, and tear and twist them with the 
torment of a thousand deaths. Before it, were two iron 
hehnets, with breast-pieces : made to close up tight and 
smooth upon the heads of living sufferers ; and fastened on to 
each, was a small knob or anvil, where the directing devil 
could repose his elbow at his ease, and listen, near the 
walled-up ear, to the lamentations and confessions of the 
wretch within. There was that grim resemblance in them to 
the human shape — they were such moulds of sweating faces, 
pained and cramped — that it was difficult to think them 
empty ; and terrible distortions lingering within them, seemed 
to foRow me, when, taking to my boat again, I rode off to a 
kind of garden or public walk in the sea, where there were 
grass and trees. But I forgot them when I stood upon its 
farthest brink — I stood there, in my dream — and looked, 
along the ripple, to the setting sun ; before me, in the sky 
and on the deep, a crimson flush; and behind me the 
whole city resolving into streaks of red and purple, on 
the water. 

In the luxurious wonder of so rare a dream, I took but 
little heed of time, and had but little understanding of its 
flight. But there were days and nights in it ; and when 
the sun was high, and when the raj^s of lamps were crooked 
in the running water, I was still afloat, I thought : plashing 
the slippery walls and houses with the cleavings of the 
tide, as my black boat, borne upon it, skimmed along the 
streets. 

Sometimes, alighting at the doors of churches and vast 
palaces, I wandered on, from room, to room, from aisle to 
aisle, through labja-inths of rich altars, ancient monuments ; 
decayed apartments where the furniture, half awful, half 
grotesque, was mouldering away. Pictures were there, 
replete with such enduring beauty and expression : with such 
passion, truth, and power : that they seemed so many young 
and fresh realities among a host of spectres, I thought these, 
often intei-mingled with the old days of the city : with its 
beauties, tyrants, captains, patriots, merchants, courtiers, 
priests : nay, with its very stones, and bricks, and public 
places; all of which lived again, about me, on the walls. 
TJieri, coming down some marble staircase where the water 
lapped and oozed against tlio lower steps, I passed into my 
boat again, and went on in my dream. 



AN ITALIAN DREAM. 79 

Floating down narrow lanes, where carpenters, at work 
with plane and chisel in their shops, tossed the light shaving 
straight upon the water, where it lay like weed, or ebbed 
away before me in a tangled heap. Past open doors, decayed 
and rotten from long steeping in the wet, through which some 
scanty patch of vine shone green and bright, making unusual 
shadows on the pavement with its trembling leaves. Past 
quays and terraces, where women, gracefully veiled, were 
passing and repassing, and where idlers Avere reclining in the 
sunshine, on flag-stones and on flights of steps. Past bridges, 
where there were idlers too : loitering and looking over. 
Below stone balconies, erected at a giddy height, before the 
loftiest windows of the loftiest houses. Past plots of garden, 
theatres, shrines, prodigious piles of architecture — Gothic — 
Saracenic — fanciful with all the fancies of all times and 
countries. Past buildings that were high, and low, and 
black, and white, and straight, and crooked ; mean and grand, 
crazy and strong. Twining among a tangled lot of boats and 
barges, and shooting out at last into a Grand Canal ! There, 
in the errant fancy of my dream, I saw old Shylock passing 
to and fro upon a bridge, all built upon with shops and 
humming with the tongues of men ; a form I seemed to know 
for Desdemona's, leaned down through a latticed blind to 
pluck a flower. And, in the dream, I thought that Shake- 
speare's spirit was abroad upon the water somewhere : stealing 
through the city. 

At night, when two votive lamps burnt before an image of 
the Virgin, in a gallery outside the great cathedral, near the 
roof, I fancied that the great piazza of the Winged Lion was 
a blaze of cheerful light, and that its whole arcade was 
thronged with people ; while crowds were diverting themselves 
in splendid coffee-houses opening from it — which were never 
shut, I thought, but open all night long. When the bronze 
giants struck the hour of midnight on the bell, I thought 
the life and animation of the city were all centered here; 
and as I rowed away, abreast the silent quays, I only 
saw them dotted, here and there, with sleeping boatmen 
wrapped up in their cloaks, and lying at full length upon 
the stones. 

But, close about the quays and churches, palaces and 
prisons : sucking at their walls, and welling up into the 
secret places of the town : crept the water always. Noiseless 



80 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and watclifiil : coiled round and round it, in its many folds, 
like an old serpent : waiting for the time, I thought, when 
people should look down into its depths for any stone of the 
old city that had claimed to be its mistress. 

Thus it floated me away, until I awoke in the old market- 
place at Verona. I have, many and many a time, thought, 
since, of this strange Dream upon the water : half- wondering 
if it He there yet, and if its name be Venice. 



BY VEEONA, MANTUA, AND MILAN, ACEOSS 
THE PASS OF THE SIMPLON INTO 
SWITZEELAND. 



I HAD been half afraid to go to Verona, lest it should at all 
put me out of conceit mth Romeo and Juliet. But, I was no 
sooner come into the old Market-place, than the misgiving 
vanished. It is so fanciful, quaint, and picturesque a place, 
formed by such an extraordinary and rich variety of fantastic 
buildings, that there could be nothing better at the core of 
even this romantic toTvn : scene of one of the most romantic 
and beautiful of stories. 

It was natural enough, to go straight from the Market-place, 
to the House of the Capulets, now degenerated into a most 
miserable little inn. Noisy vettiu'ini and muddy market-carts 
were disputing possession of the yard, which was ankle-deep in 
dirt, "\vith a brood of splashed and bespattered geese ; and 
there was a grim-visaged dog, viciously panting in a doorway, 
who would certainly have had Romeo by the leg, the moment 
he put it over the wall, if he had existed and been at large in 
those times. The orchard fell into other hands, and was parted 
off many years ago ; but there used to be one attached to the 
house — or at all events there may have been, — and the hat 
(Cappello) the ancient cognizance of the family, may still be 
seen, carved in stone, over the gateway of the yard. The 
geese, the market-carts, their drivers, and the dog, were some- 
what in the way of the story, it must be confessed ; and it 
would have been pleasanter to have found the house empty, 
and to have been able to walk tlirough the disused rooms. 
But the hat was unspeakably comfortable ; and the place where 
the garden used to be, hardly less so. Besides, the house is 
a distrustful, jealous-looking house as one would desire to 
see, though of a very moderate size. So I was quite satisfied 
■with it, as the veritable mansion of old Capulet, and was 



82 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

corresponding-ly grateful in my acknowledgments to an 
extremely unsentimentcal middle-aged lady, the Padrona of the 
Hotel, who was lounging on the threshold looking at the 
geese ; and who at least resembled the Capulets in the one 
particular of being very great indeed in the *' Family" way. 

From Juliet's home, to Juliet's tomb, is a transition as 
natural to the visitor, as to fair Juliet herself, or to the 
proudest Juliet that ever has taught the torches to burn bright 
in any time. So, I went off, with a guide, to an old, old 
garden, once belonging to an old, old convent, I suppose ; and 
being admitted, at a shattered gate, by a bright-eyed woman 
who was Avashing clothes, went down some walks where fi'esh 
plants and young flowers were prettily growing among frag- 
ments of old wall, and ivy-covered mounds ; and was sho'^ni a 
little taiik, or water trough, which the bright-eyed woman — 
drjdng her arms upon her 'kerchief, called, '' La tomba di 
Giulietta la sfortunata." "With the best disposition in the 
world to believe, I could do no more than believe that the 
bright-eyed woman believed ; so I gave her that much credit, 
and her customary fee in ready money. It was a pleasure, 
rather than a disappointment, that Juliet's resting-place was 
forgotten. However consolatory it may have been to Yorick's 
Ghost, to hear the feet upon the pavement overhead, and, 
twenty times a day, the repetition of his name, it is better for 
Juliet to lie out of the track of tourists, and to have no visitors 
but such as come to graves in spring-rain, and sweet air, and 
sunshine. 

Pleasant Verona ! With its beautiful old palaces, and 
charming country in the distance, seen from terrace walks, and 
stately, balustraded galleries. With its Roman gates, still 
spanning the fair street, and casting, on the sunlight of to-day, 
the shade of fifteen hundred years ago. With its marble- 
fitted churches, lofty towers, rich architecture, and quaint old 
quiet thoroughfares, where shouts of Montagues and Capulets 
once resounded. 

And made Verona's ancient citizens 

Cast by their grave, beseeming ornaments, 

To wield old partizaus. 

With its fast-rushing river, picturesque old bridge, great 
castle, waving cypresses, and prospect so delightful, and so 
chcerfid ! Pleasant Verona ! 

In the midst of it, in the Piazza di Bra — a spirit of old 



VEKONA. 83 

time among tlie familiar realities of the passing* hour- —is the 
great Roman Amphitheatre. So well preserved, and carefully 
maintained, that every row of seats is there, unbroken. Over 
certain of the arches, the old Roman numerals may yet be 
seen ; and there are corridors, and staircases, and subterranean 
passages for beasts, and winding waj^'S, above-ground and 
below, as when the fierce thousands hurried in and out, intent 
upon the bloody shows of the arena. Nestling in some of the 
shadows and hollow places of the walls, now, are smiths with 
their forges, and a few small dealers of one kind or other ; and 
there are green weeds, and leaves, and grass, upon the parapet. 
But little else is greatly changed. 

AVhen I had traversed all about it, with great interest, and 
had gone up to the topmost round of seats, and turning fi:om 
the lovely panorama closed in by the distant Alps, looked down 
into the building, it seemed to lie before me like the inside of 
a prodigious hat of plaited straw, with an enormously broad 
brim and a shallow crown : the plaits being represented by 
the four-and-forty rows of seats. The comparison is a homely 
and fantastic one, in sober remembrance and on paper, but it 
was irresistibly suggested at the moment, nevertheless. 

An equestrian troop had been there, a short time before — 
the same troop, I dare say, that appeared to the old lady in the 
church at Modena — and had scooped out a Kttle ring at one 
end of the arena ; where their performances had taken place, 
and where the marks of their horses' feet were still fresh. I 
could not but picture to myself, a handful of spectators 
gathered together on one or two of the old stone seats, and a 
spangled Cavalier being gallant, or a Policinello funny, with 
the grim walls looking on. Above all, I thought how strangely 
those Roman mutes would gaze upon the favourite comic scene 
of the travelling English, where a British nobleman (Lord 
John), with a yevj loose stomach : dressed in a blue tailed coat 
down to his heels, bright yellow breeches, and a white hat : 
comes abroad, riding double on a rearing horse, with an 
English lady (Lady Betsey) in a straw bonnet and green veil, 
and a red spencer ; and who always carries a gigantic reticule, 
and a put-up parasol. 

I walked through and through the town all the rest of the 
day, and could have walked there until now, I think. In one 
place, there was a very pretty modern theatre, where they had 
just performed the opera (always popular in Verona) of Romeo 

a2 



84 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and Juliet. In another, there was a collection, under a 
colonnade, of Gi-eek, Roman, and Etruscan remains, presided 
over by an ancient man who might have been an Etruscan 
relic himself; for he was not strong enough to open the iron 
gate, when he had unlocked it, and had neither voice enough 
to be audible when he described the curiosities, nor sight 
enough to see them : he was so very old. In another 
place, there was a gallery of pictures : so abominably bad, that 
it was quite delightful to see them mouldering away. But 
anywhere : in the churches, among the palaces, in the streets, 
on the bridge, or down beside the river : it was always pleasant 
Verona, and in my remembrance always will be. 

I read Romeo and Juliet in my own room at the inn that 
night — of course, no Englishman had ever read it there, before 
— and set out for Mantua next day at sunrise, repeating to 
myself (in the coupe of an omnibus, and next to the conductor, 
who was reading the Mysteries of Paris) 

There is no world without Verona's walls, 
But purgatory, torture, hell itself. 
Hence-banished is banish' d from the world, 
And world's exile is death 

which reminded me that Romeo was only banished five-and- 
twenty miles after all, and rather disturbed my confidence in 
his energy and boldness. 

Was the way to Mantua as beautiful, in his time, I wonder ! 
Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright with the 
same glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of 
graceful trees ! Those purple mountains lay on the horizon, 
then, for certain; and the dresses of these peasant girls, who 
wear a great, knobbed, silver pin like an English '' life- 
preserver " through their hair behind, can hardly be much 
changed. The hopeful feeling of so bright a morning, and so 
exquisite a sunrise, can have been no stranger, even to an 
exiled lover's breast ; and Mantua itself must have broken on 
him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and water, 
pretty much as on a common-place and matrimonial omnibus. 
He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two 
rumbling drawbridges ; passed through the like long, covered, 
wooden bridge ; and leaving the marshy water behind, 
approached the rusty gate of stagnant Mantua. 

If ever a man were suited to his place of residence, and his 
place of residence to him, the lean Apothecaiy and Mantua 



f/ 



MANTDA. ' 85 

came togetlier in a perfect fitness of tMngs. fc may have 
been more stirring then, perhaps. If so, the i^othecary was 
a man in advance of his time, and knew what ]\Iantua would 
be, in eighteen hundred and forty-four. He fasted much, and 
that assisted him in his foreknowledge. 

I put up at the Hotel of the Golden Lion, and was in my 
own room arranging plans with the Brave Courier, when there 
came a modest Kttle tap at the door, which opened on an outer 
gaUery surrounding a courtyard; and an intensely shabby 
little man looked in, to inquire if the gentleman would have 
a Cicerone to show the town. His face was so very wistful 
and anxious, in the half-opened doorway, and there was so 
much poverty expressed in his faded suit and little pinched 
hat, and in the thread-bare worsted glove with which he held 
it — not expressed the less, because these were evidently his 
genteel clothes, hastily slipped on — that I would as soon have 
trodden on him as dismissed him. I engaged him on the 
instant, and he stepped in directly. 

While I finished the discussion in which I was engaged, he 
stood, beaming by himself in a corner, making a feint of 
brushing my hat with his arm. If his fee had been as many 
napoleons as it was francs, there coiTld not have shot over the 
twihght of his shabbiness such a gleam of sun, as lighted up 
the whole man, now that he was hired. 

"Well!" said I, when I was ready, "shall we go out 
now ? " 

" If the gentleman pleases. It is a beautiful day. A little 
fresh, but charming; altogether charming. The gentleman 
will allow me to open the door. This is the Inn Yard. The 
coui'tyard of the Golden Lion ! The gentleman will please to 
mind his footing on the stairs." 

We were now in the street. 

"This is the street of the Golden Lion. This, the outside 
of the Golden Lion. The interesting window up there, on the 
first Piano, where the pane of glass is broken, is the window 
of the gentleman's chamber ! " 

Having viewed all these remarkable objects, I inquired if 
there were much to see in INIantua. 

" WeU ! Truly, no. Not much ! So, so," he said, 
shrugging his shoulders apologetically. 

" Many churches ? " 

" No. Nearly all suppressed by the French." 



/ 



86 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

" Monasteries or convents ? " 

"No. The French again ! Nearly all suppressed by 
Napoleon." 

" Much business ? " 

*' Very little business." 

" Many strangers ? " 

"Ah Heaven!" 

I thought he would have fainted. 

" Then, when we have seen the two large Churches yonder, 
what shall we do next ? " said I. 

He looked up the street, and down the street, and rubbed 
his chin timidly ; and then said, glancing in my face as if a 
light had broken on his mind, yet with a humble appeal to 
my forbearance that was perfectly irresistible : 

" We can take a little turn about the town, Signore ! " (Si 
pud far 'un piccolo giro della citta). 

It was impossible to be anything but delighted with the 
proposal, so we set off together in great good-humoiu\ In the 
relief of his mind, he opened his heart, and gave up as much 
of Mantua as a Cicerone could. 

" One must eat," he said; " but, bah ! it was a duU place, 
without doubt ! " 

He made as much as possible of the Basilica of Santa 
Andrea — a noble church — and of an inclosed portion of the 
pavement, about which tapers were burning, and a few people 
kneeling, and under which is said to be preserved the Saugreal 
of the old Romances. This church disposed of, and another 
after it (the cathedral of San Pietro), we went to the Museum, 
which was shut up. " It was all the same," he said ; " Bali ! 
There was not much inside ! " Then, we went to see the Piazza 
del Diavolo, built by the Devil (for no particular piu-pose) in 
a single night ; then, the Piazza Virgiliana ; then the statue 
of Virgil — our Poet, my little friend said, plucking up a spii-it, 
for the moment, and putting his hat a little on one side. 
Then, we went to a dismal sort of farmj^ard, by which a 
picture-gallery was approached. The moment the gate of 
this retreat was opened, some five hundred geese came 
waddling round us, stretching out their necks, and clamouring 
in the most hideous manner, as if they were ejaculating, 
" Oh ! here 's somebody come to see the Pictures ! Don't go 
up ! Don't go up ! " While we went up, they waited very 
quietly about the door in a crowd, cackling to one another 



MANTUA. 87 

occasionally, in a sutdued tone ; but the instant we appeared 
again, their necks came out like telescopes, and setting up a 
great noise, wkicli meant, I have no doubt, *' ^Vhat, you would 
go, would you ! ^^^lat do you think of it ! How do you like 
it ! " they attended us to the outer gate, and cast us forth, 
derisively, into Mantua. 

The geese who saved the Capitol, were, as compared with 
these. Pork to the learned Pig. What a gallery it was ! I 
would take their opinion on a question of art, in preference to 
the discourses of Sir Joshua RejTiolds. 

Now that we were standing in the street, after being thus 
ignominiously escorted thither, my little friend was plainly 
reduced to the "piccolo giro," or little circuit of the town, he 
had formerly proposed. But my suggestion that we should 
visit the Palazzo Te (of which I had heard a great deal, as a 
strange wild place) imparted new life to him, and away we 
went. 

The secret of the length of Midas' ears, would have been 
more extensively known, if that servant of his, who whispered 
it to the reeds, had lived in Mantua, where there are reeds 
and rushes enough to have published it to all the world. The 
Palazzo Te stands in a swamp, among this sort of vegetation ; 
and is, indeed, as singular a place as I ever saw. 

Not for its dreariness, though it is very dreary. Nor for 
its dampness, though it is very damp. Nor for its desolate 
condition, though it is as desolate and neglected as house can 
be. But chiefly for the unaccountable nightmares with which 
its interior has been decorated (among other subjects of more 
delicate execution), by Giulio Poma,no. There is a leering 
Giant over a certain chimney-piece, and there are dozens of 
Giants TTitans warring with Jove) on the walls of another 
room, so inconceivably ugly and grotesque, that it is marvel- 
lous how any man can have imagined such creatures. In 
the chamber in which the}^ abound, these monsters, with 
swollen faces and cracked cheeks, and every kind of distortion 
of look and limb, are depicted as staggering im.der the weight 
of falling buildings, and being overwhelmed in the ruins ; 
upheaving masses of rock, and burying themselves beneath ; 
vainly striving to sustain the pillars of heavy roofs that^ topple 
down upon their heads ; and, in a word, undergoing and doing 
every kind of mad and demoniacal destruction. The figures 
are immensely large, and exaggerated to the utmost pitch of 



88 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

uncouthness ; tlie colouring is harsli and disagreeable; and 
the whole effect more like (I should imagine) a violent rush of 
blood to the head of the spectator, than any real pictui-e set 
^before him by the hand of an artist. This apoplectic per- 
formance was shown by a sickly looking woman, whose 
appearance was referable, I dare say, to the bad air of the 
marshes ; but it was difficult to help feeling as if she were 
too much haunted by the Giants, and they were frightening 
her to death, all alone in that exhausted cistern of a Palace, 
among the reeds and rushes, with the mists hovering about 
outside, and stalking round and round it continually. 

Our walk through Mantua showed us, in almost every street, 
some suppressed church : now used for a warehouse, now for 
nothing at all : all as crazy and dismantled as they could be, 
Bhpj;t of tumbling down bodily. The marshy town was so 
intensely dull and flat, that the dirt upon it seemed not to 
have come there in the ordinary course, but to have settled 
and mantled on its surface as on standing water. And yet 
there were some business-dealings going on, and some profits 
reaKsing ; for there were arcades full of Jews, where those 
extraordinary people were sitting outside their shops, con- 
templating their stores of stuffs, and woollens, and bright 
handlierchiefs, and trinkets : and looking, in aU respects, as 
wary and business-like, as their bretliren in Houndsditch, 
London. 

Having selected a Vetturino from among the neighbouring 
Christians, who agreed to carry us to JNIilan in two days and 
a half, and to start, next morning, as soon as the gates were 
opened, I returned to the Golden Lion, and dined luxuriously 
in my own room, in a narrow passage between two bedsteads : 
confronted by a smoky fii'e, and backed up by a chest of 
drawers. At six o'clock next morning, we were jingling in 
the dark through the wet cold mist that enshrouded the 
town; and, before noon, the driver (a native of Mantua, 
and sixty years of age or thereabouts), began to ask the way 
to Milan. 

It lay tlu-ough Bozzolo ; formerly a little republic, and now 
one of the most deserted and poverty-stricken of towns : where 
the landlord of the miserable inn (God bless him ! it was his 
weekly custom), was distributing infinitesimal coins among a 
clamorous herd of women and children, whose rags Avere 
fluttering in the wind and rain outside his door, where they 



MILAN. 89 

were gathered to receive his charity. It lay through mist, 
and mud, and rain, and vines trained low upon the ground, 
all that day and the next ; the first sleeping-place being 
Cremona, memorable for its dark brick churches, and im- 
mensely high tower, the Torrazzo — to say nothing of its 
violins, of which it certainly produces none in these dege- 
nerate days ; and the second, Lodi. Then we went on, through 
more mud, mist, and rain, and marshy ground : and through 
such a fog, as Englishmen, strong in the faith of their own 
grievances, are apt to believe is nowhere to be found but 
in their own country, until we entered the paved streets of 
Milan. 

The fog was so dense here, that the spire of the far-famed 
Cathedral might as well have been at Bombay, for anything 
that could be seen of it at that time. But as we halted 
to refresh, for a few days then, and returned to Milan again 
next summer, I had ample opportunities of seeing the glorious 
structure in aU its majesty and beauty. 

All Christian homage to the saint who lies within it ! There 
are many good and tmiQ saints in the calendar, but San 
Carlo Borromeo has — if I may quote Mrs. Primrose on 
such a subject — ^' my warm heart." A charitable doctor to 
the sick, a munificent friend to the poor, and this, not in any 
spirit of blind bigotry, but as the bold opponent of enormous 
abuses in the Romish church, I honor his memory. I honor it 
none the less, because he was nearly slain by a priest, suborned, 
by priests, to murder him at the altar : in acknowledgment of 
his endeavours to reform a false and hypocritical brotherhood 
of monks. Heaven shield all imitators of San Carlo Borromeo 
as it shielded him ! A reforming Pope would need a little 
shielding, even now. 

The subterranean chapel in which the body of San Carlo 
Borromeo is preserved, presents as striking and as ghastly a 
contrast, perhaps, as any place can show. The tapers which 
are lighted down there, flash and gleam on alti-rilievi in gold 
and silver, delicately wrought by skilful hands, and represent- 
ing the principal events in the life of the saint. Jewels, and 
precious metals, shine and sparkle on every side. A windlass 
slowly removes the front of the altar ; and, within it, in a 
gorgeous shrine of gold and silver is seen, through alabaster, 
the shrivelled mummy of a man : the pontifical robes with 
which it is adorned, radiant with diamonds, emeralds, rubies i 



90 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

every costly and magnificent gem. The shrunken heap of 
poor eartli in the midst of this great glitter, is more pitiful 
than if it lay upon a dunghill. There is not a ray of imprisoned 
light in all the flash and fire of jewels, but seems to mock the 
dusty holes where eyes were, once. Every thread of silk in 
the rich vestments seems only a provision from the worms 
that spin, for the behoof of worms that propagate in sepul- 
chi'es. 

In the old refectory of the dilapidated Convent of Santa 
Maria delle Grazie, is the work of art, perhaps better known 
than any other in the world : the Last Supper, by Leonardo 
da Yinci — with a door cut thi'ough it by the intelligent 
Dominican friars, to facilitate tlieir operations at dinner 
time. 

I am not mechanically acquainted with the art of painting, 
and have no other means of judging of a picture than as I see 
it resembling and refining upon nature, and presenting graceful 
combinations of forms and colours. I am, therefore, no autho- 
rity whatever, in reference to the ''touch" of this or that 
master ; though I know very well (as anybody may, who chooses 
to think about the matter) that few very great masters can 
possibly have painted, in the compass of their lives, one half 
of the pictiu^es that bear their names, and that are recognised 
by many aspirants to a reputation for taste, as undoubted 
originals. But this, by the way. Of the Last Supper, I 
would simply observe, that in its beautiful composition and 
arrangement, there it is, at INIilan, a wonderful picture ; and 
that, in its original colouring, or in its original expression of 
any single face or feature, there it is not. Apart from the 
damage it has sustained fi'om damp, decay, or neglect, it has 
been (as Barry shows) so retouched upon, and repainted, and 
that so clumsily, that many of the heads are, now, positive 
deformities, with patches of paint and plaster sticking upon 
them like wens, and utterly distorting the expression. AVhere 
the original artist set that impress of his genius on a face, 
which, almost in a line or touch, separated him from meaner 
painters and made him what he was, succeeding bunglers, 
filling up, or painting across seams and cracks, have been 
quite unable to imitate liis hand ; and putting in some scowls, 
or frowns, or -uTi-inkles, of tlieir o^^'n, have blotched and spoiled 
the work. This is so well established as a historical fact, 
that I should not repeat it, at the risk of being tedious, but 



MILAN. 91 

for having ©"bserved an Englisli gentleman before tlie picture, 
who was at great pains to fall into what I may describe as 
mild convulsions, at certain minute details of expression which 
are not left in it. Whereas, it would be comfortable and 
rational for travellers and critics to arrive at a general under- 
standing that it cannot fail to have been a work of extraordi- 
nary merit, once : when, with so few of its original beauties 
remaining, the grandeur of the general design is yet suffi- 
cient to sustain it, as a piece replete with interest and 
dignity. 

We achieved the other sights of Milan, in due course, and 
a fine city it is, though not so unmistakeably Italian as to 
possess the characteristic qualities of many towns far less 
important in themselves. The Cor so, where the Milanese 
gentry ride up and down in carriages, and rather than not do 
which, they would half starve themselves at home, is a most 
noble public promenade, shaded by long avenues of trees. In 
the splendid theatre of La Scala, there was a ballet of action 
performed after the opera, under the title of Prometheus : in 
the beginning of which, some hundred or two of men and 
women represented our mortal race before the refinements of 
the arts and sciences, and loves and graces, came on earth to 
soften them. I never saw anything more effective. Gene- 
rally speaking, the pantomimic action of the Italians is more 
remarkable for its sudden and impetuous character than for 
its delicate expression ; but, in this case, the drooping 
monotony : the weary, miserable, listless, moping life : the 
sordid passions and desires of human creatures, destitute of 
those elevating influences to which we owe so much, and to 
whose promoters we render so little : were expressed in a 
manner really powerful and affecting. I should have 
thought it almost impossible to present such an idea so strongly 
on the stage, without the aid of speech. 

Milan soon lay behind us, at five o'clock in the morning ; 
and before the golden statue on the summit of the cathedral 
spire was lost in the blue sky, the Alps, stupendously con- 
fused in lofty peaks and ridges, clouds and snow, were tower- 
ing in our path. 

Still, we continued to advance towards them until nightfall ; 
and, all day long, the mountain tops presented strangely shift- 
ing shapes, as the road displayed them in different points of 
view. The beautiful day was just declining, when we came 



92 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

upon the Lago Maggiore, with its lovely islands. For how- 
ever fanciful and fantastic the Isola Bella may be, and is, it 
still is beautiful. Anything springing out of that blue water, 
with that scenery around it, must be. 

It was ten o'clock at night when we got to Domo d'Ossola, 
at the foot of the Pass of the Simplon. But as the moon 
was shining brightly, and there was not a cloud in the starlit 
sky, it was no time for going to bed, or going anywhere but 
on. So, we got a little carriage, after some delay, and began 
the ascent. 

It was late in November ; and the snow lying four or five 
feet thick in the beaten road on the summit (in other parts 
the new drift was already deep), the air was piercing cold. 
But, the serenity of the night, and the grandeur of the road, 
with its impenetrable shadows, and deep glooms, and its sudden 
turns into the shining of the moon, and its incessant roar of 
falling water, rendered the journey more and more sublime at 
every step. 

Soon leaving the calm Italian villages below us, sleeping in 
the moonlight, the road began to wind among dark trees, and 
after a time emerged upon a barer region, very steep and 
toilsome, where the moon shone bright and high. By 
degrees, the roar of water grew louder ; and the stupendous 
track, after crossing the torrent by a bridge, struck in betAveen 
two massive perpendicular walls of rock that quite shut out 
the moonlight, and only left a few stars shining in the narrow 
strip of sky above. Then, even this was lost, in the thick 
darkness of a cavern in the rock, through which the way was 
pierced ; the terrible cataract thundering and roaring close 
below it, and its foam and spray hanging, in a mist, about 
the entrance. Emerging from this cave, and coming again 
into the moonlight, and across a dizzy bridge, it crept and 
twisted upward, through the Gorge of Gondo, savage and 
grand beyond description, with smooth-fronted precipices, 
rising up on either hand, and almost meeting overhead. Thus 
we went, climbing on our rugged way, higher and higher all 
night, without a moment's weariness : lost in the contemplation 
of the black rocks, the tremendous heights and depths, the 
fields of smooth snow lying in the clefts and hollows, and 
the fierce torrents thundering headlong doAATi the deep abyss. 

Towards daybreak, we came among the snow, where a keen 
wind was blowing fiercely. Having, with some trouble, 



GORGE OP THE SALTINE. 93 

awakened tlie inmates of a wooden house in this solitude : 
round whicli the wind was howling dismally, catching up the 
snow in wreaths and hurling it away : we got some breakfast 
in a room built of rough timbers, but well warmed by a stove, 
and well contrived (as it had need to be) for keeping out the 
bitter storms. A sledge being then made ready, and foiu' 
horses harnessed to it, we went, ploughing, through the snow. 
Still upward, but now in the cold light of morning, and with 
the great white desert on which we travelled, plain and 
clear. 

We were well upon the summit of the mountain : and had 
before us the rude cross of wood, denoting its greatest altitude 
above the sea : when the light of the rising sun, struck, all at 
once, upon the waste of snow, and turned it a deep red. The 
lonely grandeur of the scene, was then at its height. 

As we went sledging on, there came out of the Hospice 
founded by Napoleon, a group of Peasant travellers, with 
staves and knapsacks, who had rested there last night : 
attended by a Monk or two, their hospitable entertainers, 
trudging slowly forward with them, for company's sake. It 
was pleasant to give them good morning, and pretty, looking 
back a long way affcer them, to see them looking back at us, 
and hesitating presently, when one of our horses stumbled and 
feU, whether or no they should return and help us. But he 
was soon up again, with the assistance of a rough waggoner 
whose team had stuck fast there too ; and when we had 
helped him out of his difficulty, in return, we left him 
slowly ploughing towards them, and went softly and swiftly 
forward, on the brink of a steep precipice, among the 
mountain pines. 

Taking to our wheels again, soon afterwards, we began 
rapidly to descend; passing under everlasting glaciers, by 
means of arched galleries, hung with clusters of dripping 
icicles ; under and over foaming waterfalls ; near places of 
refuge, and galleries of shelter against sudden danger ; 
through caverns over whose arched roofs the avalanches slide, 
in spring, and bury themselves in the unknown gulf beneath. 
Down, over lofty bridges, and through horrible ravines : a 
little shifting speck in the vast desolation of ice and snow, 
and monstrous granite rocks : down through the deep Gorge 
of the Saltine, and deafened by the torrent plunging madly 
down, among the riven blocks of rock, into the level country, 



94 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

far below. Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between 
an upward and a downward precipice, into warmer weatlier, 
calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay before us, 
glittering like gold or silver in the tbaw and sunshine, the 
metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-spires of 
a Swiss town. 

The business of these recollections being with Italy, and 
my business, consequently, being to scamper back thither as 
fast as possible, I will not recall (though I am sorely tempted) 
how the Swiss villages, clustered at the feet of Giant 
mountains, looked like playthings ; or how confusedly the 
houses were heaped and piled together ; or how there were 
ver}'- narrow streets to shut the howling winds out in the 
winter time ; and broken bridges, which the impetuous 
torrents, suddenly released in spring, had swept away. Or 
how there were peasant women here, with great rouud fur 
caps : looking, when they peeped out of casements and only 
their heads were seen, like a population of Sword-bearers to 
the Lord Mayor of London ; or how the town of Vevay, 
lying on the smooth lake of Geneva, was beautiful to see ; or 
how the statue of Saint Peter in the street at Fribourg, grasps 
the largest key that ever was beheld ; or how Fribourg is 
illustrious for its two suspension bridges, and its grand 
cathedral organ. 

Or how, between that town and Bale, the road meandered 
among thriving villages of wooden cottages, with overhanging 
thatched roofs, and low protruding windows, glazed with 
small round panes of glass like crown-pieces ; or how, in 
every little Swiss homestead, with its cart or waggon carefully 
stowed away beside the house, its little garden, stock of 
poultry, and groups of red-cheeked children, there was an air 
of comfort, very new and very pleasant after Italy ; or how 
the dresses of the women changed again, and there were no 
more sword-bearers to be seen ; and fair white stomachers, 
and great black, fan-shaped, gauzy-looking caps, prevailed 
instead. 

Or how the country by the Jura mountains, sprinkled with 
enow, and lighted by the moon, and musical with falling 
water, was delightful ; or how, below the windows of the 
great hotel of the Three Kings at Kale, the swollen Rhine ran 
fast and green ; or how, at Strasbourg, it was quite as fast 
but not as green: and was said to be foggy lower down: 



STRASBOURG TO PARIS. 95 

and, at tliat late time of the year, was a far less certain means 
of progress, tlian the highway road to Paris. 

Or how Strasbourg itself, in its magnificent old Gothic 
Cathedral, and its ancient houses with their peaked roofs and 
gables, made a little gallery of quaint and interesting views ; 
or how a crowd was gathered inside the cathedral at noon, to 
see the famous mechanical clock in m.otion, striking twelve. 
How, when it struck twelve, a whole army of puppets went 
through many ingenious evolutions ; and, among them, a 
huge puppet-cock, perched on the top, crowed twelve times, 
loud and clear. Or how it was wonderful to see this cock at 
great pains to clap its wings, and strain its throat ; but 
obviously having no connection whatever with its own voice ; 
which was deep within the clock, a long way down. 

Or how the road to Paris, was one sea of mud , and 
thence to the coast, a little better for a hard frost. Or how 
the cliffs of Dover were a pleasant sight, and England was so 
wonderfully neat — though dark, and lacking colour on a 
winter's day, it must be conceded. 

Or how, a few days afterwards, it was cool, re-crossing the 
channel, with ice upon the decks, and snow l}T.ng pretty deep 
in France. Or how the Malle Poste scrambled through the 
snow, headlong, drawn in the hilly parts by any number of 
stout horses at a canter ; or how there were, outside the 
Post-oifice Yard in Paris, before daybreak, extraordinary 
adventurers in heaps of rags, groping in the snowy streets with 
little rakes, in search of odds and ends. 

Or how, between Paris and ^Marseilles, the snow being then 
exceeding deep, a thaw came on, and the mail waded rather 
than rolled for the next three hundred miles or so ; breaking 
springs on Sunday nights, and putting out its two passengers 
to warm and refresh themselves pending the repairs, in 
miserable billiard-rooms, where hairy company, collected 
about stoves, were plapng cards ; the cards being very like 
themselves — extremely limp and dirty. 

Or how there was detention at Marseilles from stress of 
weather; and steamers were advertised to go, which did not 
go ; or how the good Steam-packet Charlemagne at length 
put out, and met such weather that now she threatened to 
run into Toulon, and now into Nice, but, the wind, moderating, 
did neither, but ran on into Genoa harbour instead, where 
the familiar Bells rang sweetly in my ear. Or how there 



96 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

was a travelling party on board, of wliom one member was 
very ill in the cabin next to mine, and being ill was cross, 
and therefore declined to give up the Dictionary, which he 
kept under his pillow; thereby obliging his companions to 
come down to him, constantly, to aslc what was the Italian 
for a lump of sugar — a glass of brandy and water — what 's 
o'clock ? and so forth : which he always insisted on looking 
out, with his own sea-sick eyes, declining to entrust the book 
to any man alive. 

Like Gktjmio, I might have told you, in detail, all this 
and something more — but to as little purpose — ^were I not 
deterred by the remembrance that my business is with Italy. 
Therefore, like Grumio's story, it ** shall die ia oblivioii." 



1 



TO EOME BY PISA AND SIENA. 



Thebe is notliing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the 
coast-road between Genoa and Spezzia. On one side : 
sometimes far below, sometimes nearly on a level with the 
road, and often skirted by broken rocks of many shapes : 
there is the free blue sea, with here and there a picturesque 
felucca gliding slowly on ; on the other side are lofty hills, 
ravines besprinkled with white cottages, patches of dark olive 
woods, country churches with their light open towers, and 
coimtry houses gaily painted. On every bank and knoll by 
the wayside, the wild cactus and aloe flourish in exuberant 
profusion ; and the gardens of the bright villages along the 
road, are seen, all blushing in the summer-time with clusters 
of the Belladonna, and are fragrant in the autumn and winter 
with golden oranges and lemons. 

Some of the villages are inhabited, almost exclusively, by 
fishermen ; and it is pleasant to see their great boats hauled 
up on the beach, making little patches of shade, where they 
lie asleep, or where the women and children sit romping and 
looking out to sea, while they mend their nets upon the 
shore. There is one town, Camoglia, wdth its little harbour 
on the sea, hundreds of feet below the road : where families 
of mariners live, who, time out of mind, have OTiTied coasting- 
vessels in that place, and have traded to Spain and elsewhere. 
Seen from the road above, it is like a tiny model on the 
margin of the dimpled water, shining in the sun. Descended 
into, by the winding mule-tracks, it is a perfect miniature of 
a primitive seafaring town; the saltest, roughest, most 
piratical little place that ever was seen. Gfeat rusty iron 
rings and mooriug-chains, capstans, and fragments of old 
masts and spars, choke up the way ; hardy rough-weather 
boats, and seamen's clothing, flutter in the little harbour or 
are drawn out on the sunny stones to dry ; on the parapet of 

H 



98 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

tlie rude pier, a few amphibious-looking fellows lie asleep, 
with their legs dangling over the wall, as though earth or 
water were all one to them, and if they slipped in, they would 
float away, dozing comfortably among the fishes ; the church 
is bright with trophies of the sea, and votive ofierings, in 
commemoration of escape from storm and shipwreck. The 
dwellings not immediately abutting on the harbour are 
approached by blind low archways, and by crooked steps, as 
if in darkness and in difficulty of access they should be like 
holds of ships, or inconvenient cabins under water ; and 
everywhere, there is a smell of fish, and seaweed, and 
old rope. 

The coast-road whence Camoglia is descried so far below, is 
famous, in the warm season, especially in some parts near 
Genoa, for fire-flies. Walking there, on a dark night, I have 
seen it made one sparkling firmament by these beautiful 
insects ; so that the distant stars were pale against the flash 
and glitter that spangled every olive wood and hill-side, and 
pervaded the whole air. 

It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed 
this road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was 
only just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather ; 
very wet besides. In crossing the flne pass of Bracco, we 
encountered such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled 
in a cloud the whole way. There might have been no Medi- 
terranean in the world, for anything we saw of it there, except 
when a sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before it, for a 
moment, showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, 
lashing the distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. 
The rain was incessant ; every brook and torrent was greatly 
swollen ; and such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and 
thundering of water, I never heard the like of in my life. 

Hence, when we came to Spezzia, we found that the Magra, 
an unbridged river on the high-road to Pisa, was too high 
to be safely crossed in the Ferry Boat, and were fain to wait 
until the afternoon of next day, when it had, in some degree, 
subsided. Spezzia, however, is a good place to tarry at ; by 
reason, firstly, of its beautiful bay ; secondly, of its ghostly 
Inn ; thirdly, of the head-dress of the women, who wear, on 
one side of their head, a small doll's straw hat, stuck on to the 
hair ; which is certainly the oddest and most roguish head- 
gear that ever was invented. 



CARRARA. 99 

Tlie Magra safely crossed in the Ferry Boat — tlie passage 
is not by any means agreeable, when the current is swollen 
and strong — ^we arrived at Carrara, within a few hours. In 
good time next morning, we got some ponies, and went out 
to see the marble quarries. 

They are four or five great glens, running up into a range 
of lofty hills, until they can run no longer, and are stopped 
by being abruptly strangled by Nature. The quarries, or 
** caves," as they call them there, are so many openings, high 
up in the hills, on either side of these passes, where they blast 
and excavate for marble : which may turn out good or bad : 
may make a man's fortune very quickly, or ruin him by the 
great expense of working what is worth nothing. Some of 
these caves were opened by the ancient Romans, and remain 
as they left them to this hour. Many others are being 
worked at this moment ; others are to be begun to-morrow, 
next week, next month ; others are unbought, unthought of; 
and marble enough for more ages than have passed since the 
place was resorted to, lies hidden everywhere : patiently 
awaiting its time of discovery. 

As you toil and clamber up one of these steep gorges (hav- 
ing left your pony soddening his girths in water, a mile or 
tjvo lower down) you hear, every now and then, echoing 
among the hills, in a low tone, more silent than the previous 
silence, a melancholy warning bugle, — a signal to the miners 
to withdraw. Then, there is a thundering, and echoing 
from hill to hill, and perhaps a splashing up of great frag- 
ments of rock into the air ; and on you toil again until some 
other bugle sounds, in a new direction, and you stop directly, 
lest you should come within the range of the new explosion. 

There were numbers of men, working high up in these 
hills- — on the sides — clearing away, and sending down the 
broken masses of stone and earth, to make way for the blocks 
of marble that had been discovered. As these came rolling 
down from imseen hands into the narrow valley, I could not 
help thinking of the deep glen (just the same sort of glen) 
where the Roc left Sinbad the Sailor ; and where the mer- 
chants from the heights above, flung downi great pieces of 
meat for the diamonds to stick to. There were no eagles 
here, to darken the sun in their swoop, and pounce upon 
them ; but it was as wild and fierce as if there had been 
hundreds. 

b2 



100 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

But tlie road, the road down "u^liicli the marble comGS> 
ho \^' ever immense the blocks ! The genius of the country, 
and the spirit of its institutions, pave that road : repair it^ 
watch it, keep it going ! Conceive a channel of water run- 
ning over a rocky bed, beset with great heaps of stone of all 
shapes and sizes, winding down the middle of this valley ; 
and that being the road — because it was the road five hundred 
years ago ! Imagine the clumsy carts of five hundred years 
ago, being used to this hour, and drawn, as they used to be, 
five hundred years ago, by oxen, whose ancestors were worn 
to death five hundred years ago, as their unhappy descendants 
are now, in twelve months, by the sufi'ering and agony of 
this cruel work ! Two pair, four pair, ten pair, twenty pair, 
to one block, according to its size ; down it must come, this 
way. In their struggling from stone to stone, with their 
enormous loads behind them, they die frequently upon the 
spot ; and not they alone ; for their passionate drivers, some- 
times tumbling down in their energy, are crushed to death 
beneath the wheels. But it was good five hundi-ed years 
ago, and it must be good now ; and a railroad do^m one of 
these steeps (the easiest thing in the world) would be flat 
blasphemy. 

When we stood aside, to see one of these cars drawn by 
only a pair of oxen (for it had but one small block of marble 
on it), coming down, I hailed, in my heart, the man who sat 
upon the heavy yoke, to keep it on the neck of the poor beasts 
— and who faced backward : not before him — as the very Devil 
of ti'ue despotism. He had a great rod in his hand, with an iron 
point; and when they could plough and force their way 
through the loose bed of the torrent no longer, and came to a 
stop, he poked it into their bodies, beat it on their heads, 
screwed it roim.d and round in their nostrils, got them on a 
yard or two, in the madness of intense pain ; repeated all 
these persuasions, with increased intensity of purpose, when 
they stopped again ; got them on, once more ; forced and 
goaded tliem to an abrupter point of the descent ; and when 
their writhing and smartiug, and the weight behind them, 
bore them plunging down the precipice in a cloud of scattered 
w^ater, whirled his rod above liis head, and gave a great whoop 
and hallo, as if he had achieved something, and had no idea 
that they might shake him ofi", and blindly mash his brains 
npon the road, in the noon-tide of Lis tiiumph. 



CARRARA. 101 

Standing in one of tlie many stiidii of Carrai'a, that after- 
noon — for it is a great workshop, full of beautifiilly-fiuished 
copies in marble, of almost every figure, group, and bust, we 
know — it seemed, at first, so strange to me that those exqui- 
site shapes, replete with grace, and thought, and delicate 
repose, should grow out of all this toil, and sweat, and torture I 
But I soon found a parallel to it, and an explanation of it, in 
every virtue that springs up in miserable ground, and every 
good thing that has its birth in sorrow and distress. And, 
looking out of the sculptor's great window, upon the marble 
mountains, all red and glowing in the decline of day, but 
stern and solemn to the last, I thought, my God ! how many 
quarries of human hearts and souls, capable of far more 
beautiful results, are left shut up and mouldering away : while 
pleasure- travellers through life, avert their faces, as they pass, 
and shudder at the gloom and ruggedness that conceal them I 

The then reigning Duke of JModena, to whom this territory 
in part belonged, claimed the proud distinction of being the 
only sovereign in Eui'ope who had not recognised Louis- 
Philippe as King of the French ! He was not a wag, but 
quite in earnest. He was also much opposed to railroads ; 
and if certain lines in contemplation by other potentates, on 
either side of him, had been executed, would have probably 
enjoyed the satisfaction of having an omnibus plying to and 
fro, across his not very vast dominions, to forward travellers 
from one terminus to another. 

Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and 
bold. Few tourists stay there ; and the people are nearly 
all connected, in one way or other, with the working of 
marble. There are also villages among the caves, where 
the workmen live. It contains a beautiful little Theatre, 
newly-built ; and it is an interesting custom there, to form 
the chorus of labourers in the marble quarries, who are 
self-taught and sing by ear. I heard them in a comic 
opera, and in an act of '' Norma ; " and they acquitted 
themselves very well; unlike the common people of Italy 
generally, who (with some exceptions among the Neapo- 
litans) sing vilely out of tune, and have very disagreeable 
singing voices. 

From the summit of a lofty hiU beyond Carrara, the first 
view of the fertile plain in which the town of Pisa lies — with 
Leghorn, a purple spot in the fiat distance — is enchautiug. 



102 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

Nor is it only distance that lends enchantment to tlie 
view; for the fruitful country, and rich woods of olive-trees 
through which the road subsequently passes, render it 
delightful. 

The moon was shining when we approached Pisa, and for 
a long time we could see, behind the wall, the leaning 
To-s^er, all awry in the uncertain Kght ; the shadowy original 
of the old pictures in school-books, setting forth '' The 
"Wonders of the World." Like most things connected in their 
first associations with school-books and school-times, it was 
too small. I felt it keenly. It was nothing like so high 
above the wall as I had hoped. It was another of the many 
deceptions practised by Mr. Harris, Bookseller, at the corner 
of St. Paul's Churchyard, London. His Tower w^as a fiction, 
but this was reality — and, by comparison, a short reality. 
Still, it looked very well, and very strange, and was C|uite as 
much out of the perpendicular as Harris had represented it 
to be. The quiet air of Pisa too ; the big guardhouse at the 
gate, with only two little soldiers in it ; the streets, with 
scarcely any show of people in them ; and the Arno, flowing 
quaintly through the centre of the town ; were excellent. 
So, I bore no malice in my heart against Mr. Harris (remem- 
bering his good intentions) but forgave him before dinner 
and went out, full of confidence, to see the To"u^er next 
morning. 

1 might have known better ; but, somehow, I had expected 
to see it, casting its long shadow on a public street where 
people came and went all day. It was a surprise to me to 
find it in a grave retired place, apart from the general resort, 
and carpeted with smooth green turf. But, the group of 
buildings, clustered on and about this verdant carpet : com- 
prising the Tower, the Baptistery, the Cathedral, and the 
Church of the Campo Santo : is perhaps the most remarkable 
and beautiful in the whole world ; and fi-om being clustered 
there, together, away from the ordinary transactioiis and 
details of the town, they have a singularly venerable and im- 
pressive character. It is the architectural essence of a rich 
old city, with all its common life and common habitations 
pressed out, and filtered away. 

SisMONDi compares tlie Tower to the usual pictorial repre- 
sent-ations in children's books of the Tower of Babel. It is 
a happy simile, and conveys a better idea of the building than 



PISA, 108 

chapters of laboured description. Nothing can exceed the 
grace and lightness of the structure; nothing can be more 
remarkable tban its general appearance. In the course of the 
ascent to the top (which is by an easy staircase), the inclination 
is not very apparent ; but, at the summit, it becomes so, and 
gives one the sensation of being in a ship that has heeled over, 
thi'ough the action of an ebb-tide. The effect upon the low 
side, so to speak — looking over from the gallery, and seeing 
the shaft recede to its base — is very startling; and I saw a 
nervous traveller hold on to the Tower involuntarily, after 
glancing down, as if he had some idea of propping it up. 
The view within, from the ground — looking up, as through a 
slanted tube — is also very curious. It certainly inclines as 
much as the most sanguine tourist could desire. The natural 
impulse of ninety-nine people out of a hundred, who were 
about to recline upon the grass below it, to rest, and con- 
template the adjacent buildings, would probably be, not to 
take up their position under the leaning side ; it is so very 
much aslant. 

The manifold beauties of the Cathedral and Baptistery 
need no recapitulation fi-om me ; though in this case, as in a 
hundred others, I find it difiicult to separate my own deKght 
in recalling them, from your weariness in having them 
recalled. There is a pictui'e of Saint Agnes, by Andrea del 
Sarto, in the former, and there are a variety of rich columns 
in the latter, that tempt me strongly. 

It is, I hope, no breach of my resolution not to be tempted 
into elaborate descriptions, to remember the Campo Santo ; 
where grass-grown graves are dug in earth brought more 
than six hundred years ago, from the Holy Land ; and where 
there are, surrounding them, such cloisters, with such playing 
lights and shadows falling through their delicate tracery on 
the stone pavement, as surely the dullest memory could never 
forget. On the walls of this solemn and lovely place, are 
ancient ft-escoes, very much obliterated and decayed, but very 
curious. As usually happens in almost any collection of 
paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are many heads, 
there is, in one of them, a striking accidental likeness of 
Napoleon. At one time, I used to please my fancy with the 
speculation whether these old painters, at their work, had a 
foreboding knowledge of the man who would one day arise 
to wreak such destruction upon art: whose soldiers would 



104 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

make targets of great pictures, and stable tlieir horses 
among triumplis of architecture. But the same Corsican 
face is so plentiful in some parts of Italy at this day, 
that a more commonplace solution of the coincidence is 
unavoidable. 

If Pisa be the seventh wonder of the world in right of its 
Tower, it may claim to be, at least, the second or third in 
right of its beggars. They waylay the unhappy visitor at 
every turn, escort him to every door he enters at, and lie in 
wait for him, with strong reinforcements, at every door by 
which they know he must come out. The grating of the 
portal on its hinges is the signal for a general shout, and 
the moment he appears, he is hemmed in, and fallen on, 
by heaps of rags and personal distortions. The beggars 
seem to embody all the trade and enterprise of Pisa. Nothing 
else is stirring, but warm air. Going through the streets, 
the fronts of the sleepy houses look like backs. They are aU 
so still and quiet, and unlike houses with people in them, that 
the greater part of the city has the appearance of a city at 
daybreak, or during a general siesta of the population. Or 
it is yet more like those backgrounds of houses in common 
prints, or old engravings, where windows and doors are 
squarely indicated, and one figure (a beggar of course) is seen 
walking ofi" by itself into illimitable perspective. 

Not so Leghorn (made illustrious by Smollett's grave), 
which is a thriving, business-like, matter-of-fact place, where 
idleness is shouldered out of the way by commerce. The 
regulations observed there, in reference to trade and merchants, 
are very liberal and free ; and the to"s\Ti, of course, benefits 
by them. Leghorn has a bad name in connection with 
stabbers, and with some justice it must be allowed ; for, not 
many years ago, there was an assassination club there, the 
members of which bore no ill-will to anybody in particular, 
but stabbed people (quite strangers to them) in the streets at 
night, for the pleasure and excitement of the recreation. I 
think the president of this amiable society, was a shoemaker. 
Ke was taken, however, and the club was broken up. It 
would, probably, have disappeared in the natural course of 
events, before the railroad between Leghorn and Pisa, which 
is a good one, and has already begun to astonish Italy with 
a precedent of X)unctuality, order, plain dealing, and improve- 
ment — the most dangerous and heretical astonisher of all. 



IIEGHORN. 105 

Tliere must have been a slight sensation, as of earthquake, 
Burely, in the Vatican, when the first Italian raiboad was 
thrown open. 

Returning to Pisa, and hiring a good-tempered Vetturino, 
and his four horses, to take us on to Rome, we travelled 
through pleasant Tuscan villages and cheerful scenery all day. 
The roadside crosses in this part of Italy are numerous and 
curious. There is seldom a figure on the cross, though there 
is sometimes a face ; but they are remarkable for being gar- 
nished with little models in wood, of every possible object that 
can be connected with the Saviour's death. The cock that 
crowed when Peter had denied his Master thrice, is usually 
perched on the tip-top ; and an ornithological phenomenon he 
generally is. Under him, is the inscription. Then, hung on 
to the cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge of 
■vinegar and water at the end, the coat without seam for which 
the soldiers cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw 
for it, the hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that 
pulled them out, the ladder which was set against the cross, 
the crown of thorns, the instrument of flagellation, the 
lantern with w^hich Mary went to the tomb (I suppose), and 
the sword with which Peter smote the servant of the high 
priest, — a perfect toy-shop of little objects, repeated at every 
four or five miles, all along the highway. 

On the evening of the second day from Pisa, we reached 
the beautiful old city of Siena. There was what they called a 
Carnival, in progress ; but, as its secret lay in a score or two 
of melancholy people walking up and down the principal 
street in common toy -shop masks, and being more melancholy, 
if possible, than the same sort of people in England, I say no 
more of it. We went off, betimes next morning, to see the 
Cathedral, which is wonderfully picturesque inside and out, 
especially the latter — also the market-place, or great Piazza, 
which is a large square, with a great broken-nosed fountain in 
it : some quaint gothic houses : and a high square brick 
tower ; outside the top of which — a curious feature in such 
views in Italy — hangs an enormous bell. It is like a bit of 
Venice, without the water. There are some curious old 
Palazzi in the town, which is very ancient ; and without having 
(for me) the interest of Verona, or Genoa, it is very dreamy 
and fantastic, and most interesting. 

We went on again, as soon as we had seen these things, 



106 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and g*oing over a rather bleak country (there had been nothing 
but vines until now : mere walking sticks at that season of 
the year), stopped, as usual, between one and two hours in 
the middle of the day, to rest the horses ; that being a part 
of every Vetturino contract. We then went on again, through 
a region gradually becoming bleaker and wilder, until it 
became as bare and desolate as any Scottish moors. Soon 
after dark, we halted for the night, at the osteria of La Scala : 
a perfectly lone house, where the family were sitting round a 
great fire in the kitchen, raised on a stone platform three or 
four feet high, and big enough for the roasting of an ox. 
On the upper, and only other floor of this hotel, there was 
a great wild rambling sala, with one very Kttle window in a 
by-corner, aud four black doors opening into four black 
bedrooms in various directions. To say nothing of another 
large black door, opening into another large black sala, with 
the staircase coming abruptly through a kind of trap-door in 
the floor, and the rafters of the roof looming above : a sus- 
picious little press skulking in one obscure corner : and all the 
knives in the house Ivino^ about in various directions. The 
fire-place was of the purest Italian architecture, so that it 
was perfectly impossible to see it for the smoke. The waitress 
was like a dramatic brigand's wife, and wore the same style 
of dress upon her head. The dogs barked like mad; the 
echoes returned the compliments bestowed upon them ; there 
was not another house within twelve miles ; and things had a 
dreary, and rather a cut-throat, appearance. 

They were not improved by rumours of robbers having 
come out, strong and boldly, within a few nights ; and of their 
having stopped the mail very near that place. They were 
known to have waylaid some travellers not long before, on 
Mount Vesuvius itself, and were the talk at all the roadside 
inns. As they were no business of ours, however (for we had 
very little with us to lose), we made oiu-selves merry on the 
subject, and were very soon as comfortable as need be. We 
had the usual dinner in this solitary house ; and a very good 
dinner it is, when you are used to it. There is something with. 
a vegetable or some rice in it, which is a sort of short-hand 
or arbitrary character for soup, and which tastes very well, 
when you have flavored it with plenty of grated cheese, lots of 
Bait, and abundance of pepper. There is the half fowl of 
which this soup has been made. There is a stewed pigeon, 



KADICOFANI. 107 

with, the gizzards and livers of liiniself and other birds stuck 
all round him. There is a bit of roast beef, the size of a 
small French roll. There are a scrap of Parmesan cheese, and 
five little withered apples, all huddled together on a small 
plate, and crowding one upon the other, as if each were trying 
to save itself from the chance of being eaten. Then there is 
cofiee ; and then there is bed. You don't mind brick floors ; 
you don't mind yawning doors, nor banging windows ; you 
don't mind your own horses being stabled under the bed : and 
so close, that every time a horse coughs or sneezes, he wakes 
you. If you are good-humoured to the people about you, and 
speak pleasantly, and look cheerful, take my word for it you 
may be well entertained in the very worst Italian Inn, and 
always in the most obliging manner, and may go from one end 
of the country to the other (despite all stories to the contrary) 
without any great trial of your patience anywhere. Especially, 
when you get such wine in flasks, as the Orvieto, and the 
Monte Pulciano. 

It was a bad morning when we left this place ; and we 
went, for twelve miles, over a country as barren, as stony, and 
as wild, as Cornwall in England, until we came to Radicofani, 
where there is a ghostly, goblin inn : once a hunting- seat, 
belonging to the Dukes of Tuscany. It is full of such ram- 
bling corridors, and gaunt rooms, that all the murdering and 
phantom tales that ever were written might have originated 
in that one house. There are some horrible old Palazzi in 
Genoa : one in particular, not unlike it, outside : but there is 
a windy, creaking, wormy, rustling, door-opening, foot-on- 
staircase-falling character about this Radicofani Hotel, such as 
I never saw, anywhere else. The town, such as it is, hangs 
on a hill-side above the house, and in front of it. The 
inhabitants are all beggars; and as soon as they see a 
carriage coming, they swoop down upon it, like so many 
birds of prey. 

When we got on the mountain pass, which lies beyond this 
place, the wind (as they had forewarned us at the inn) was so 
terrific, that we were obliged to take my other half out of the 
carriage, lest she should be blown over, carriage and all, and 
to hang to it, on the windy side (as well as we could for 
laughing), to prevent its going, Heaven knows where. For 
mere force of wind, this land-storm might have competed with 
an Atlantic gale, and had a reasonable chance of coming off 



108 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

victorious. The blast came sweeping down great gullies in a 
range of mountains on tlie right : so that we looked with 
positive awe at a great morass on the left, and saw that there 
was not a bush or twig to hold by. It seemed as if, once 
blown from our feet, we must be swept out to sea, or away 
into space. There was snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning, 
and thunder; and there were rolling mists, travelling with 
incredible velocity. It was dark, awful, and solitary to the 
last degree ; there were mountains above mountains, veiled in 
angry clouds ; and there was such a wrathful, rapid, violent, 
tumultuous hurry, everywhere, as rendered the scene unspeak- 
ably exciting and grand. 

It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding ; and to 
cross even the dismal dirty Papal Frontier. After passing 
through two little towns ; in one of which, Acquapendente, 
there was also a " Carnival " in progress : consisting of one 
man dressed and masked as a woman, and one woman dressed 
and masked as a man, walking anlde-deep, through the muddy 
streets, in a very melancholy manner : we came, at dusk, 
within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose bank there is a 
little town of the same name, much celebrated for malaria. 
With the exception of this poor place, there is not a cottage 
on the banks of the lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep 
there) ; not a boat upon its waters ; not a stick or stake to 
break the dismal monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles. 
We were late in getting in, the roads being very bad from 
heavy rains ; and, after dark, the dulness of the scene was quite 
intolerable. 

We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of desola- 
tion, next night, at sunset. We had passed through Monte- 
fiaschone (famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its fountains) : 
and after climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles extent, 
came suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake : in one part 
very beautiful, with a luxuriant wood ; in another, very barren, 
and shut in by bleak volcanic hills. Where tliis lake flows, 
there stood, of old, a city. It was swallowed up one day ; and 
in its stead, this water rose. There are ancient traditions 
(common to many parts of the world) of the ruined city having 
been seen below, when the water was clear ; but however that 
may be, from tliis spot of earth it vanished. The ground 
came bubbling up above it ; and the water too ; and here 
they stand, like ghosts on whom the other world closed 



CAMPAGNA ROMANA, 109 

suddenly, and who have no means of getting back again. 
They seem to be waiting the com^se of ages, for the next 
earthquake in that place ; when they will plunge below the 
ground, at its first ya^^vning, and be seen no more. The 
unhappy city below, is not more lost and dreary, than these 
fire-charred hills and the stagnant water, above. The red sun 
looked strangely on them, as with the knowledge that they 
were made for caverns and darkness ; and the melancholy 
water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among 
the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the 
ancient towers and house-tops, and the death of all the 
ancient people born and bred there, were yet heavy on its 
conscience. 

A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione ; a 
little town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the night. 
Next morning at seven o'clock, we started for Rome. 

As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the 
Campagna Romana ; an undulating flat (as you know), where 
few people can live ; and where, for miles and miles, there is 
nothing to relieve the terrible monotony and gloom. Of all 
kinds of country that could, by possibility, lie outside the gates 
of Rome, this is the aptest and fittest burial-ground for the 
Dead City. So sad, so quiet, so sullen ; so secret in its 
covering up of great masses of ruin, and hiding them ; so like 
the waste places into which the men possessed with devils, used 
to go and howl, and rend themselves, in the old days of Jeru- 
salem. We had to traverse thirty miles of this Campagna ; 
and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing but 
now and then a lonely house, or a villanous-looking shepherd : 
with matted hair all over his face, and himseK wrapped to the 
chin in a frowsy brown mantle, tending his sheep. At the end 
of that distance, we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get 
some lunch, in a common malaria- shaken, despondent little 
public-house, whose every inch of wall and beam, inside, was 
(according to custom) painted and decorated in a way so 
miserable that every room looked like the wrong side of 
another room, and, with its wretched imitation of drapery, and 
lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed to have been plundered 
from behind, the scenes of some travellino;' circus. 

When we were fairly off again, we began, in a perfect fever, 
to strain our eyes for Rome ; and when, after another mile or 
two, the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance ; it 



110 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

looked like — I am half afraid to write the word — like 
LONDON ! ! ! There it lay, under a thick cloud, with innu- 
merable towers, and steeples, and roofs of houses, rising up into 
the sky, and high above them all, one Dome. I swear, that 
keenly as I felt the seeming absurdity of the comparison, it 
was so like London, at that distance, that if you could have 
shown it me, in a glass, I should have taken it for nothing 
else. 



KOIME. 



We entered fhe Eternal City, at about four o*clock in the 
afternoon, on the tliirtietli of January, by tbe Porta del 
Popolo, and came immediately — it was a dark muddy day, 
and there had been heavy rain — on the skirts of the Carnival. 
We did not, then, know that we were only looking at the fag 
end of the masks, who were driving slowly round and round 
the Piazza, until they could find a promising opportunity for 
falling into the stream of carriages, and getting, in good 
time, into the thick of the festivit^^ ; and coming among them 
so abruptly, all travel- stained and weary, was not coming 
very well prepared to enjoy the scene. 

We had crossed the Tiber by the Ponte Molle, two or three 
miles before. It had looked as yellow as it ought to look, 
and hurrying on between its worn-away and miry banks, had 
a promising aspect of desolation and ruin. The masquerade 
dresses on the fringe of the Carnival, did great violence to 
this promise. There were no great ruins, no solemn tokens 
of antiquity, to be seen ; — they all' lie on the other side of 
the city. There seemed to be long streets of commonplace 
shops and houses, such as are to be found in any European 
town ; there were busy people, equipages, ordinary walkers to 
and fro ; a multitude of chattering strangers. It was no 
more my Rome : the Rome of anybody's fancy, man or boy : 
degraded and fallen and lying asleep in the sun among a 
heap of ruins : than the Place de la Concorde in Paris is. 
A cloudy sky, a dull cold rain, and muddy streets, I was 
prepared for, but not for this : and I confess to having gone 
to bed, that night, in a very indifferent humour, and with 
a very considerably quenched enthusiasm. 

Immediately on going out next day, we hurried off to 
St. Peter's. It looked immense in the distance, but distinctly 
and decidedly small, by comparison, on a near approach. 



112 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

The beauty of the Piazza in which it stands, with its clusters 
of exquisite columns, and its gushing fountains, — so fresh, 
so broad, and free, and beautifid — nothing can exaggerate. 
The first burst of the interior, in all its expansive najesty 
and glory : and, most of all, the looking up into the jjome : 
is a sensation never to be forgotten. But, there were prepa- 
rations for a Festa ; the pillars of stately marble were swathed 
in some impertinent frippery of red and yellow ; the altar, 
and entrance to the subterranean chapel: which is before 
it : in the centre of the church : were like a goldsmith's shop, 
or one of the opening scenes in a very lavish pantomime. 
And though I had as high a sense of the beauty of the building 
(I hope) as it is possible to entertain, I felt no very strong 
emotion, I have been infinitely more afiected in many English 
cathedrals when the organ has been playing, and in many 
English country chui'ches when the congregation have been 
singing. I had a much greater sense of mystery and wonder, 
in the Cathedral of San Mark at Venice. 

When we came out of the church again (we stood nearly 
an hour staring up into the dome : and would not have " gone 
over " the Cathedral then, for any money), we said to the 
coachman, ''Go to the CoKseum." In a quarter of an hour 
or so, he stopped at the gate, and we went in. 

It is no fiction, but plain, sober, honest Truth, to say : so 
suggestive and distinct is it at this hour : that, for a 
moment — actually in passing in — they who will, may have 
the whole great pile before them, as it used to be, M'ith 
thousands of eager faces staring down into the arena, and 
such a whirl of strife, and blood, and dust, going on there, 
as no language can describe. Its solitude, its awful beauty, 
find its utter desolation, strike upon the stranger the next 
moment, like a softened sorrow; and never in his life, 
perhaps, will he be so moved and overcome by any sight, 
not immediately connected with his own afiections and 
afflictions. 

To see it crumbling there, an inch a year ; its walls and 
arches overgrown with gi-een ; its corridors open to the day ; 
the long grass growing in its porches; j'oung trees of 
yesterday, springing up on its ragged parapets, and bearing 
fruit: chance produce of the seeds" dropped there by the birds 
who build their nests within its chinks and crannies ; to see 
its Pit of Fight filled up with earth, and the peaceful Cross 



ROME. 113 

planted in the centre; to climb into its upper halls, and 
look down on ruin, ruin, ruin, all about it ; the triumphal 
arches of Constantine, Septimus Severus, and Titus ; the 
Roman Forum ; the Palace of the Caesars ; the temples of the 
old religion, fallen do\\Ti and gone ; is to see the ghost of 
old Rome, wicked wonderful old city, haunting the very ground 
on which its people trod. It is the most impressive, the most 
stately, the most solemn, grand, majestic, moiu'nful sight, 
conceivable. Never, in its bloodiest prime, can the sight of 
the gigantic Coliseum, full and running over with the lustiest 
life, have moved one heart, as it must move all who look upon 
it now, a ruin. God be thanlied : a ruin ! 

As it tops the other ruins : standing there, a mountain 
among graves : so do its ancient influences outlive all other 
remnants of the old mythology and old butchery of Rome, in 
the nature of the fierce and cruel Roman people. The Italian 
face changes as the visitor approaches the city; its beauty 
becomes devilish ; and there is scarcely one countenance in a 
hundred, among the common people in the streets, that would 
not be at home and happy in a renovated Coliseum to-morrow. 

Here was Rome indeed at last ; and such a Rome as no 
one can imagine in its full and awful grandeur ! We 
wandered out upon the Appian Way, and then Avent on, 
through miles of ruined tom.bs and broken walls, with here 
and there a desolate and uninhabited house : past the Circus 
of Romulus, where the course of the chariots, the stations of 
the judges, competitors, and spectators, are yet as plainly to 
be seen as in old time : past the tomb of Cecilia Metella : 
past all inclosure, hedge, or stake, wall or fence : away upon 
the open Campagna, where on that side of Rome, nothing is 
to be held but Ruin. Except where the distant Apennines 
bound the view upon the left, the whole wide prospect is one 
field of ruin. Broken aqueducts, left in the most picturesque 
and beautiful clusters of arches ; broken temples ; broken 
tombs. A desert of decay, sombre and desolate beyond all 
expression ; and with a history in every stone that strews the 
ground. 

On Sunday, the Pope assisted in the performance of High 
Mass at St. Peter's. The effect of the Cathedral on my mind, 
on that second visit, was exactly what it was at first, and 
what it remains after many visits. It is not religiously 

I 



114 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

impressive or affecting. It is an immense edifice, with no 
one point for the mind to rest upon ; and it tires itself with 
wandering round and round. The very pui-|)ose of the place, 
is not expressed in anything you see there, unless you examine 
its details — and all examination of details is incompatible 
with the place itself. It might be a Pantheon, or a Senate 
House, or a great architectin-al trophy, having no other 
object than an architectural triumph. There is a black 
statue of St. Peter, to be sure, under a red canopy ; which is 
larger than life, and which is constantly having its great toe 
kissed by good Catholics. You cannot help seeing that : it 
is so very prominent and popular. But it does not heighten 
the effect of the temple, as a work of art ; and it is not 
expressive — to me at least — of its high purpose. 

A large space behind tlie altar, was fitted up with boxes, 
shaped like those at the Itahan Opera in England, but in 
tlieir decoration much more gaudy. In the centre of the 
kind of theatre thus railed off, was a canopied dais with the 
Pope's chair upon it. The pavement was covered with a 
carpet of the brightest green ; and what with this green, and 
the intolerable reds and crimsons, and gold borders of the 
hangings, the whole concern looked like a stupendous Bon-bon. 
On either side of the altar, was a large box for lad}^ strangers. 
These were filled with ladies in black dresses and black veils. 
The gentlemen of the Pope's guard, in red coats, leather 
breeches, and jack- boots, guarded all this reserved space, with 
drawn swords, that were very flashy in every sense; and from 
the altar all down the nave, a broad lane was kept clear by 
the Pope's Swdss guard, who wear a quaint striped surcoat, 
and striped tight legs, and carry halberds like those which are 
usually shouldered by those theatrical supernumeraries, who 
never can get off the stage fast enough, and who may be 
generally observed to linger in the enemy's camp after the 
open country, held by the opposite forces, has been split up 
the middle by a convidsion of Nature. 

I got upon the border of the gi-een carpet, in company with 
a great many other gentlemen, attired in black, (no other 
passport is necessary), and stood there at my ease, during the 
performance of mass. The singers were in a crib of wire- 
work (like a large meat-safe or bird-cage) in one corner ; and 
sang most atrociously. All about the green carpet, there 
was a slowly moving crowd of people : tiilking to each other : 



ROME. 115 

staring at the Pope through eye-glasses : defrauding one 
another, in moments of partial curiosity, out of precarious 
seats on the bases of pillars : and grinning hideously at the 
ladies. Dotted here and there, were little knots of friars 
(Francescani, or Cappuccini, in their coarse brown dresses and 
peaked hoods) making a strange contrast to the gaudy eccle- 
siastics of higher degree, and having their humilitj' gratified 
to the utmost, by being shouldered about, and elbowed right 
and left, on all sides. Some of these had muddy sandals and 
umbrellas, and stained garments : having trudged in from the 
country. The faces of the greater part were as coarse and 
heavy as their dress ; their dogged, stupid, monotonous stare 
at all the glory and splendour, having something in it, half 
miserable, and half ridiculous. 

Upon the green carpet itself, and gathered round the altar, 
was a perfect army of cardinals and priests, in red, gold, 
purple, violet, white, and fine linen. Stragglers from these, 
went to and fro among the crowd, conversing two and two, 
or giving and receiving introductions, and exchanging salu- 
tations ; other functionaries in black gowns, and other func- 
tionaries in court-dresses, were similarly engaged. In the 
midst of all these, and stealthy Jesuits creeping in and out, 
and the extreme restlessness of the Youth of England, who 
were perpetually wandering about, some few steady persons 
in black cassocks, who had knelt down with their faces to 
the wall, and were poring over their missals, became, unin- 
tentionally, a sort of humane man-traps, and with their own 
devout legs, tripped up other people's by the dozen. 

There was a great pile of candles lying down on the floor 
near me, which a very old man in a rusty black gown with 
an open-work tippet, like a summer ornament for a fireplace 
in tissue-paper, made himself very busy in dispensing to all 
the ecclesiastics : one apiece. They loitered about with these 
for some time, under their arms like walking-sticks, or in 
their hands like truncheons. At a certain period of the 
ceremony, however, each carried his candle up to the Pope, 
laid it across his two knees to be blessed, took it back again, 
and filed off. This was done in a very attenuated procession, 
as you may suppose, and occupied a long time. • Not because 
it takes long to bless a candle through and through, but 
because there were so many candles to be blessed. At last 
they were all blessed ; and then they were all lighted ; and 

i2 



116 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

then tlie Pope was taken up, cliait and all, and carried round 
tlie church. 

I must say, that I never saw anything, out of November, 
so like the popular English commemoration of the fifth of 
that month. A bundle of matches and a lantern, would have 
made it perfect. Nor did the Pope, himself, at aU mar the 
resemblance, though he has a pleasant and venerable face ; 
for, as this part of the ceremony makes him giddy and sick, 
he shuts his eyes when it is performed : and having his eyes 
shut, and a great mitre on his head, and his head itself wag- 
ging to and fro as they shook him in carrying, he looked as if 
his mask were going to tumble off. The two immense fans 
which are always borne, one on either side of him, accom- 
panied him, of course, on this occasion. As they carried him 
along, he blessed the people with the mystic sign ; and as he 
passed them, they kneeled down. When he had made the 
round of the church, he was brought back again, and if I am 
not mistaken, this performance was repeated, in the whole, 
three times. There was, certainly, nothing solemn or effective 
in it ; and certainly very much that was droll and tawdry. 
But this remark applies to the whole ceremony, except the 
raising of the Host, when every man in the guard dropped on 
one knee instantly, and dashed his naked sword on the 
ground ; which had a fine effect. 

The next time I saw the cathedral, was some two or three 
weeks afterwards, when I climbed up into the ball ; and then, 
the hangings being taken down, and the carpet taken up, but 
all the framework left, the remnants of these decorations 
looked like an exploded cracker. 

The Friday and Satui-day having been solemn Festa days, 
and Sunday being always a dies non in carnival proceedings, 
we had looked forward, with some impatience and curiosity, 
to the beginning of the new week : Monday and Tuesday 
being the two last and best days of the Carnival. 

On the Monday afternoon at one or two o'clock, there 
began to be a great rattling of carriages into the court-yard 
of the hotel ; a hurrpng to and fro of all the servants in it ; 
and, now and then, a swift shooting across some doorway or 
balcony, of a straggling stranger in a fancy (b*ess : not yet siilE- 
ciently well used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and 
defy public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had 



. EOMK 117 

the linings careftilly covered with white cotton or calico, to 
prevent their proper decorations fi'oni being spoiled by the 
incessant pelting of sugar-plums ; and people were packing 
and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occupants, 
euormous sacks, and baskets-full of these confetti, together 
with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that 
some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally 
running over : scattering, at every shake and jerk of the 
springs, some of their abundance on the ground. Not to be 
behind-hand in these essential particulars, we caused two very 
respectable sacks of sugar-plums (each about three feet high) 
and a large clothes-basket full of flowers to be conveyed into 
oui' hired barouche, with all speed. And from our place of 
observation, in one of the upper balconies of the hotel, we 
contemplated these arrangements with the liveliest satisfac- 
tion. The carriages now beginning to take up their company, 
and move away, we got into ours, and drove off too, armed 
with little wire masks for our faces ; the sugar-plums, like 
Falstaff's adiolterated sack, having lime in their composition. 

The Corso is a street a mile long ; a street of shops, and 
palaces, and private houses, sometimes opening into a broad 
piazza. There are virandas and balconies, of all shapes and 
sizes, to almost every house — not on one story alone, but 
often to one room or another on every story — put there in 
general with so little order or regularity, that if, year after 
year, and season after season, it had rained balconies, hailed 
balconies, snowed balconies, blown balconies, they coidd 
scarcely have come into existence in a more disorderly manner. 

This is the great fountain-head and focus of the Carnivals 
But all the streets in which the Carnival is held, being vigi- 
lantly kept by dragoons, it is necessary for carriages, in the 
first instance, to pass, in line, do^Ti another thoroughfare, 
and so come into the Corso at the end remote from the Piazza 
del Popolo ; which is one of its terminations. Accordingly, 
we fell into the string of coaches, and, for some time, jogged 
on quietly enough ; now crawling on at a very slow walk ; 
now trotting half a dozen yards ; now backing fifty ; and now 
stopping altogether : as the pressure in front obliged us. If 
any impetuous carriage, dashed out of the rank and clattered 
forward, with the wild idea of getting on faster, it was sud- 
denly met, or overtaken, by a trooper on horseback, who, deaf 
as his own drawn sword to all lemonstrances, immediately 



118 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

escorted it, back to the very end of the row, and made it a 
dim speck in the remotest perspective. Occasionally, we inter- 
changed a volley of confetti with the carriage next in front, 
or the carriage next behind ; but, as yet, this capturing of 
stray and errant coaches by the military, was the chief 
amusement. 

Presently, we came into a narrow street, where, besides 
one line of carriages going, there was another line of carriages 
returning. Here the sugar-plums and the nosegays began to 
fly about, pretty smartly ; and I was fortunate enough to 
observe one gentleman attired as a Greek warrior, catch a 
light-whiskered brigand on the nose (he was in the very act 
of tossing up a bouquet to a young lady in a first-floor window) 
with a precision that was much applauded by the by-standers. 
As this victorious Greek was exchanging a facetious remark 
with a stout gentleman in a door-w^ay — one-half black and 
one-half white, as if he had been peeled up the middle — who 
had offered him his congratulations on this achievement, he 
received an orange from a house-top, full on his left ear, and 
was much surprised, not to say discomfited. Especially, as 
he was standing up at the time ; and in consequence of the 
carriage moving on suddenly, at the same moment, staggered 
ignominiously, and buried himself among his flowers. 

Some quarter of an hour of this sort of progress, brought 
us to the Corso ; and anj^thing so gay, so bright, and lively 
as the whole scene there, it would be dilficult to imagine. 
From all the innumerable balconies : from the remotest and 
highest, no less than from the lowest and nearest : hangings 
of bright red, bright green, bright blue, white and gold, were 
fluttering in the brilliant sunlight. From windows, and from 
parapets, and tops of houses, streamers of the richest colours, 
and draperies of the gaudiest and most sparkling hues, were 
floating out upon the street. The buildings seemed to have 
been literally turned inside out, and to have all their gaiety 
towards the highway. Shop-fronts were taken down, and the 
windows filled with company, like boxes at a shining theatre ; 
doors were carried off" their hinges, and long tapestried groves, 
hung with garlands of flowers and evergreens, displayed 
within ; builders' scaffoldings were gorgeous temples, radiant 
in silver, gold, and crimson ; and in every nook and corner, 
from the pavement to the chimney-tops, where woman's eyes 
couM glisten, there they danced, and laughed, and sparkled, 



EOME. iia 

like the light in water. Every sort of bewitchiDg' madness of 
dress was there. Little preposterous scarlet jackets ; quaint 
old stomachers, more wicked than the smartest bodices ; 
Polish pelisses, strained and tight as ripe gooseberries ; tiny- 
Greek caps, all awry, and clinging to the dark hair, Heaven 
knows how ; every wild, quaint, bold, shy, pettish, madcap 
fancy had its illustration in a dress ; and every fancy was as 
dead forgotten by its owner, in the tumult of merriment, as if 
the three old aqueducts that still remain entire, had brought 
Lethe into Rome, upon their sturdy arches, that morning. 

The carriages were now three abreast ; in broader places 
four ; often stationary for a long time together ; always one 
close mass of variegated brightness ; showing, the whole 
street-full, through the storm of flowers, like flowers of a 
larger growth themselves. In some, the horses were richly 
caparisoned in magnificent trappings ; in others they were 
decked from head to tail, with flowing ribbons. Some were 
diiven by coachmen with enormous double faces : one face 
leering at the horses : the other cocking its extraordinary 
eyes into the carriage : and both rattling again, under the hail 
of sugar-plums. Other drivers were attired as women, wear- 
ing long ringlets and no bonnets, and looking more ridiculous 
in any real difficulty with the horses (of which, in such a con- 
course, there were a great many) than tongue can tell, or pen 
describe. Instead of sitting in the carriages, upon the seats, 
the handsome Roman women, to see and to be seen the better, 
sit in the heads of the barouches, at this time of general 
licence, with their feet upon the cushions — and oh the flowing 
skirts and dainty waists, the blessed shapes and laughing 
faces, the free, good-humoured, gallant figures that they 
make ! There were great vans, too, full of handsome girls — 
thirty, or more together, perhaps — and the broadsides that 
were poured into, and poured out of, these fairy fire-ships, 
splashed the air with flowers and bonbons for ten minutes at 
a time. Carriages, delayed long in one place, would begin a 
deliberate engagement with other carriages, or with people at 
the lower windows ; and the spectators at some upper balcony 
or window, joining in the fray, and attacking both parties, 
would empty down great bags of confetti, that descended like 
a cloud, and in an instant made them white as millers. Still, 
carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, colours on colours, 
crowds upon crowds, without end. Men and boys clinging to 



120 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

the wheels of coaclies, and holding on behind, and following 
in tlieir wake, and diving in among the horses' feet to pick up 
scattered flowers to sell again ; maskers on foot (the drollest, 
generally) in fantastic exaggerations of court-dresses, surveying 
the throng through enormous eye-glasses, and always trans- 
ported with an ecstacy of love, on the discovery of any parti- 
cularly old lady at a window ; long strings of Policinelli, 
laying about them with blown bladders at the ends of sticks ; 
a waggon-full of madmen, screaming and tearing to the life ; 
a coach-full of grave mamelukes, with their horse-tail standard 
set up in the midst; a party of gipsy- women engaged in 
terrific conflict with a shipful of sailors ; a m.an-monkey on a 
pole, surrounded by strange animals with pigs' faces, and 
lions' tails, carried under their arms, or worn gracefully over 
their shoulders ; carriages on carriages, dresses on dresses, 
colours on colours, crowds upon crowds, without end. Not 
many actual characters sustained, or represented, perhaps, 
considering the number dressed, but the main pleasure of the 
scene consisting in its perfecrt good temper ; in its bright, and 
infinite, and flashing variety ; and in its entire abandonment 
to the mad humour of the time — an abandonment so perfect, 
so contagious, so irresistible, that the steadiest foreigner fights 
up to his middle in flowers and sugar-plums, like the wildest 
Roman of them all, and thinks of nothing else till half-past 
four o'clock, when he is suddenly reminded (to his great 
regret) that this is not the whole business of his existence, 
by heai*ing the trumpets sound, and* seeing the di-agoons begin 
to clear the street. 

How it ever is cleared for the race that takes place at five, 
or how the horses ever go through the race, without going 
over the people, is more than I can say. But the car- 
riages get out into the by-streets, or up into the Piazza del 
Popolo, and some people sit in temporary galleries in the 
latter place, and tens of thousands hne the Corso on both 
sides, when the horses are brought out into the Piazza — ^to 
the foot of that same column which, for centuries, looked 
down upon the games and cliariot-races in the Circus 
Maximus. 

At «. given signal they are started off. Down the live lane, 
the whole length of the Corso, they fly like the wind : rider- 
less, as all the world knows : with shining ornaments upon 
their backs, and twisted in their plaited manes; and with 



EOJIE. 121 

lieavy little balls stuck full of spikes, dangling at their sides, 
to goad tliem on. The jingling of these trappings, and the 
rattling of their hoofs upon the hard stones ; the dash and 
fary of their speed along the echoing street ; nay, the very 
cannon that are fired — these noises are nothinq; to the roarinf^ 
of the multitude : their shouts : the clapping of their hands. 
But it is soon over — almost instantaneously. More cannon 
shake the town. The horses have plunged into the carpets 
put across the" street to stop them ; the goal is reached ; the 
prizes are won (they are given, in part, by the poor Jews, as 
a compromise for not running foot-races themselves) ; and there 
is an end to that day's sport. 

But if the scene be bright, and gay, and crowded, on the 
last day but one, it attains, on the concluding day, to such a 
height of glittering colour, swarming life, and frolicsome 
uproar, that the bare recollection of it makes me giddy at this 
moment. The same diversions, greatly heightened and inten- 
sified in the ardour with which they are pui'sued, go on until 
the same hour. The race is repeated ; the cannon are fired ; 
the shouting and clapping of hands are renewed ; the cannon 
are fired again ; the race is over ; and the prizes are won. 
But, the carriages : ankle-deep in sugar-plums within, and so 
beflowered and dusty without, as to be hardly recognisable for 
the same vehicles that they were, three hours ago : instead of 
scampering ofi" in all directions, throng into the Corso, where 
they are soon wedged together in a scarcely moving mass. 
For the diversion of the Moccoletti, the last gay madness of 
the Carnival, is now at hand ; and sellers of Kttle tapers like 
what are called Christmas candles in England, are shouting 
lustily on every side, " Moccoli, Moccoli ! Ecco Moccoli ! " — 
a new item in the tumult ; quite abolishing that other item 
of " Ecco Fiori ! Ecco Fior — r — r ! " which has been maldng 
itself audible over all the rest, at intervals, the whole day 
through. 

As the bright hangings and dresses are all fading into one 
dull, heavy, uniform colour in the decHne of the day, lights 
begin flashing, here and there : in the windows, on the house- 
tops, in the balconies, in the carriages, in the hands of the 
foot-passengers : little by little : gradually, gradually : more 
and more : until the whole long street is one great glare and 
blaze of fire. Then, everybody present has but one engross- 
ing object ; that is, to extinguish other people's candles, and 



122 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

to keep his own aliglit ; and everybody : man, woman, or 
cliild, gentleman or lady, prince or peasant, native or foreigner : 
yells and screams, and roars incessantly, as a taunt to the sub- 
dued, •' Senza Moccolo, Senza Moccolo ! " (Without a light ! 
Without a light !) until nothing is heard but a gigantic chorus 
of those two words, mingled with peals of laughter. 

The spectacle, at tliis time, is one of the most extraordinary 
that can be imagined. Carriages coming slowly by, with 
everj'-body standing on the seats or on the box, holding up 
their lights at arms' length, for greater safety ; some in paper 
shades ; some with a bunch of undefended little tapers, 
kindled altogether ; some with blazing torches ; some with 
feeble little candles ; men on foot, creeping along, among the 
wheels, watching their opportunity, to make a spring at some 
particular light, and dash it out ; other people climbing up 
into carriages, to get hold of them by main force ; others, 
chasing some unlucky wanderer, round and round his own 
coach, to blow out the light he has begged or stolen some- 
where, before he can ascend to his own company, and enable 
them to light their extinguished tapers ; others, with their 
hats off, at a carriage-door, humbly beseeching some kind- 
hearted lady to oblige them with a light for a cigar, and when 
she is in the fulness of doubt whether to comply or no, blow- 
ing out the candle she is guarding so tenderly with her little 
hand ; other people at the windows, fishing for candles with 
lines and hooks, or letting down long willow-wands with 
handkerchiefs at the end, and flapping them out, dexterously, 
when the bearer is at the height of his triumph; others, 
biding their time in corners, with immense extinguishers like 
halberds, and suddenly coming down upon glorious torches ; 
others, gathered round one coach, and sticking to it ; others, 
raining oranges and nosegays at an obdurate little lantern, or 
regularly storming a pyramid of men, holding up one man 
among them, who carries one feeble little wick above his 
head, with which he defies them all ! Senza Moccolo ! Senza 
Moccolo ! Beautiful women, standing up in coaches, pointing 
in derision at extinguished lights, and clapping their hands, 
as they pass on, crying, " Senza Moccolo ! Senza Moccolo!"; 
low balconies full of lovely faces and gay dresses, struggling 
with assailants in the streets ; some repressing them as they 
climb up, some bending down, some leaning over, some 
shrinking back — delicate arms and bosoms — graceful figures 



ROME. 123 

— ^glowing lights, fluttering dresses, Seaza Moccolo, Senza 
Moccolo, Senza Moc-co-lo-o-o-o ] — when in the wildest enthu- 
siasm of the cry, and fullest ecstacy of the sport, the Ave Maria 
rings from the church steeples, and the Carnival is over in an 
instant — ^put out like a taper, with a breath ! 

There was a masquerade at the theatre at night, as dull and 
senseless as a London one, and only remarkable for the summary 
way in which the house was cleared at eleven o'clock : which 
was done by a line of soldiers forming along the wall, at the 
back of the stage, and sweeping the whole company out before 
them, like a broad broom. The game of the Moccoletti (the 
word, in the singular, Moccoletto, is the diminutive of Moc- 
colo, and means a little lamp or candle-snuff) is supposed by 
some to be a ceremony of burlesque mourning for the death 
of the Carnival : candles being indispensable to CathoKc grief. 
But whether it be so, or be a remnant of the ancient Satur- 
nalia, or an incorporation of both, or have its origin in anj^hing 
else, I shall always remember it, and the frolic, as a brilliant 
and most captivating sight: no less remarkable for the unbroken 
good -humour of aU concerned^, down to the very lowest (and 
among those who scaled the carriages^ were many of the com- 
monest men and boys) than for its innocent vivacity. For, 
odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport so full of thought- 
lessness and personal display, it is as free from any taint of 
immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can 
possibly be ; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, 
a feeling of general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, 
which one thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has 
rung it away, for a whole year. 

Availing ourselves of a part of the quiet interval between 
the termination of the Carnival and the beginning of the Holy 
Week : when everybody had run away from the one, and few 
people had yet begun to run back again for the other : we 
went conscientiously to work, to see Rome. And, by dint of 
going out early every morning, and coming back late every 
evening, and labouring hard all day, I believe we made 
acquaintance with every post and pillar in the city, and the 
country round ; and, in particular, explored so many churches 
that I abandoned that part of the enterprise at last, before it 
was half finished, lest I should never, of my own accord, go to 
church again, as long as I lived. But, I managed, almost 



124 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

every day, at one time or other, to get back to tlie ColiseTim, 
and out upon the open Campagna, "beyond the Tomb of Cecilia 
Metella. 

We often encountered, in these expeditions, a company of 
English Tourists, with whom I had an ardent, but un gratified 
longing, to establish a speaking acquaintance. They were 
one Mr. Davis, and a smaU circle of friends. It was impos- 
sible not to know Mrs. Davis's name, from her being always 
in great request among her party, and her party being every- 
where. During the Holy Week, they were in every part of 
every scene of every ceremony. For a fortnight or three 
weeks before it, they were in every tomb, and every church, 
and every ruin, and every Pictiu-e Gallery ; and I hardly ever 
observed Mrs. Davis to be silent for a moment. Deep under- 
ground, high up in St. Peter's, out on the Campagna, and 
stifling in the Jews' quarter, Mrs. Davis turned up, all the 
same. I don't think she ever sa,w anything, or ever looked at 
anj'thing ; and she had always lost something out of a straw 
hand-basket, and was trying to find it, with all her might 
and main, among an immense quantity of English halfpence, 
which lay, like sands upon the sea-shore, at the bottom of it. 
There was a professional Cicerone always attached to the party 
(which had been brought over fi'om London, fifteen or twenty 
strong, by contract), and if he so much as looked at Mrs. 
Davis, she invariably cut him short by saying, " There, God 
bless the man don't worrit me ! I don't understand a word 
you say, and shouldn't if you was to talk till 3'ou was black 
in the face ! " Mr. Davis always had a snuff-coloured great- 
coat on, and carried a great green umbrella in his hand, and 
had a slow curiosity constantly devouring him, which prompted 
him. to do extraordinary things, such as taking the covers off 
urns in tombs, and looking in at the ashes as if they were 
picldes — and tracing out inscriptions with the ferrule of his 
limbrella, and saying, with intense thoughtfulness, *' Here 's 
a B YO\i see, and there 's a R, and this is the way we goes on 
in; is it!" His antiquarian habits occasioned his being 
frequently in the rear of the rest ; and one of the agonies of 
Mrs. Davis, and the party in general, was an ever-present 
fear that Davis would be lost. This caused them to scream 
for him, in the strangest places, and at the most improper 
seasons. And when he came, slowly emerging out of some 
Sepulclire or other, like a peaceful Ghoule, saying " Here I 



ROME. 125 

am ! " Mrs. Davis invariably replied, " You '11 be buried 
alive in a foreign country, Davis, and it 's no use trying to 
prevent you ! " 

Mr. and Mrs. Davis, and their party, bad, probably, been 
brought from London in about nine or ten days. Eighteen 
hundred years ago, the Roman legions under Claudius, pro- 
tested against being led into Mr. and Mrs. Davis's country, 
urging that it lay beyond the limits of the world. 

Among what may be called the Cubs or minor Lions of 
Rome, there was one that amused me mightily. It is always 
to be found there ; and its den is on the great flight of steps 
that lead from the Piazza di Spagna, to the church of Trinita 
del Monte. In plainer words, these steps are the great place of 
resort for the artists' " Models," and there they are constantly 
waiting to be hired. The first time I went up there, I could 
not conceive why the faces seemed familiar to me ; why they 
appeared to have beset me, for years, in every possible variety 
of action and costume ; and how it came to pass that they 
started up before me, in Rome, in the broad day, like so 
many saddled and bridled nightmares. I soon found that 
we had made acquaintance, and improved it, for several years, 
on the walls of various Exhibition Galleries. There is one 
old gentleman, with long white hair and an immense beard, 
who, to my knowledge, has gone half through the catalogue 
of the Royal Academy. This is the venerable, or patriarchal 
model. He carries a long staff ; and every knot and twist in 
that staff I have seen, faithfully delineated, innumerable 
times. There is another man in a blue cloak, who always 
pretends to be asleep in the sun (when there is any), and who, 
I need not say, is always very wide awake, and very attentive 
to the disposition of his legs. This is the dolce far' niente 
model. There is another man in a brown cloak, who leans 
against a wall, with his arms folded in his mantle, and looks 
out of the corners of his eyes : which are just visible beneath 
his broad slouched hat. This is the assassin model. There 
is another man, who constantly looks over his own shoulder, 
and is always going away, but never goes. This is the 
haughty, or scornful model. As to Domestic Happiness, and 
Holy Families, they should come very cheap, for there 
are lumps of them, all up the steps ; and the cream of 
the thing, is, that they are all the falsest vagabonds in 
the world, especially made up for the pui-pose, and having 



126 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

no counterparts in Rome or any other part of tlie habitable 
globe. 

My recent mention of the Carnival, reminds me of its being- 
said to be a mock mourning (in the ceremony with which it 
closes), for the gaieties and merry-makings before Lent ; and 
this again reminds me of the real funerals and mourning 
processions of Rome, which, like those in most other parts of 
Italy, are rendered chiefly remarkable to a Foreigner, by the 
indifference with which the mere clay is universally regarded, 
after life has left it. And this is not from the survivors 
having had time to dissociate the memory of the dead from 
their well-remembered appearance and form on earth ; for 
the interment follows too speedily after death, for that : 
almost always taking place within four-and-twenty hours, and, 
sometimes, within twelve. 

At Rome, there is the same arrangement of Pits in a great, 
bleak, open, dreary space, that I have ah-eady described as 
existing in Genoa. When I visited it, at noonday, I saw a 
solitary cofiin of plain deal : uncovered by any shroud or pall, 
and so slightly made, that the hoof of any wandering mule 
would have crushed it in : carelessly tumbled down, all on one 
side, on the door of one of the pits — and there left, by itself, 
in the wind and sunshine. *' How does it come to be left 
here ? " I asked the man who showed me the place. " It was 
brought here half an hour ago, Signore," he said. I remem- 
bered to have met the procession, on its return : straggling 
away at a good round pace. " When will it be put in the 
pit ? " I asked him. " When the cart comes, and it is opened 
to-night," he said. " How much does it cost to be brought 
here in this way, instead of coming in the cart?" I asked 
him. " Ten scudi," he said (about two pounds, two-and- 
eixpence, English). " The other bodies, for whom nothing is 
paid, are taken to the church of the Santa ISIaria della Con- 
solazione," he continued, " and brought here altogether, in 
the cart at night." I stood, a moment, looking at the coffin, 
which had two initial letters scrawled upon the top ; and 
turned away, with an expression in my face, I suppose, of 
not much liking its exposure in that manner : for he said, 
shrugging his shoiJders with great vivacity, and giving a 
pleasant smile " But he 's dead, Signore, he 's dead. Why not?" 

Among the innumerable churches, there ia one I must 



EOME. 127 

select for separate mention. It is the cliurcli of tlie Ara Coeli, 
supposed to be built on tlie site of the old Temple of Jupiter 
Feretrius ; and approached, on one side, by a long steep flight 
of steps, which seem incomplete without some group of bearded 
soothsayers on the top. It is remarkable for the possession 
of a miraculous Bambino, or wooden doll, representing the 
Infant Saviour ; and I first saw this miraculous Bambino, in 
legal phrase, in manner following, that is to say : 

We had strolled into the church one afternoon, and were 
looking down its long vista of gloomy pillars (for all these 
ancient churches built upon the ruins of old temples, are dark 
and sad), when the Brave came running in, with a grin upon 
his face that stretched it from ear to ear, and implored us to 
follow him, without a moment's delay, as they were going to 
show the Bambino to a select party. We accordingly hurried 
ofF to a sort of chapel, or sacristy, hard by the chief altar, but 
not in the church itself, where the select party : consisting of 
two or three Catholic gentlemen and ladies (not ItaKans) 
were already assembled : and where one hoUow-cheeked 
young monk was lighting up divers candles, while another 
was putting on some clerical robes over his coarse brown 
habit. The candles were on a kind of altar, and above it 
were two delectable figures, such as you would see at any 
English fair, representing the Holy Virgin, and Saint Joseph, 
as I suppose, bending in devotion over a wooden box, or cofi'er; 
which was shut. 

The hollow- cheeked monk, number One, having finished 
lighting the candles, went down on his knees, in a corner, 
before this set-piece ; and the monk number Two, having put 
on a pair of highly ornamented and gold -bespattered gloves, 
lifted down the coffer, with great reverence, and set it on the 
altar. Then, with many genuflexions, and muttering certain 
prayers, he opened it, and let down the front, and took off 
sundry coverings of satin and lace from the inside. The 
ladies had been on their knees from the commencement ; and 
the gentlemen now dropped down devoutly, as he exposed to 
view a little wooden doll, in face very like General Tom Thumb, 
the American Dwarf : gorgeously dressed in satin and gold 
lace, and actually blazing with rich jewels. There was scarcely 
a spot upon its little breast, or neck, or stomach, but was 
sparkling with the costly offerings of the Faithful. Presently, 
he lifted it out of the box, and, carrying it round among the 



128 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

kneelers, set its face against the forehead of every one, and 
tendered its clumsy foot to them to kiss — a ceremony which 
they all performed, dovrn to a dirty little ragamuffin of a boy 
who had walked in from the street. AVhen this was done, he 
laid it in the box again : and the company, rising, drew near, 
and commended the jewels in whispers. In good time, he 
replaced the coverings, shut up the box, put it back in its 
place, locked up the whole concern (Holy Family and all) 
behind a pair of folding-doors ; took off his priestly vestments ; 
and received the customary "small charge," while his com- 
panion, by means of an extinguisher fastened to the end of a 
long stick, put out the lights, one after another. The candles 
being all extinguished, and the money ail collected, they 
retired, and so did the spectators. 

I met this same Bambino, in the street a short time after- 
wards, going, in great state, to the house of some sick person. 
It is taken to all parts of Rome for this purpose, constantly ; 
but, I understand that it is not always as successftJ as could 
be wished ; for, making its appearance at the bedside of weak 
and nervous people in extremity, accompanied by a numerous 
escort, it not uufrequently frightens tliem to death. It is 
most popidar in cases of child-birth, where it has done such 
wonders, that if a lady be longer than usual in getting 
thi'ough her difficulties, a messenger is despatched, with all 
speed, to solicit the immediate attendance of the Bambino. 
It is a very valuable property, and much confided in — 
especially by the religious body to whom it belongs. 

I am happy to know that it is not considered immaculate, 
by some who are good Catholics, and who are behind the 
scenes, from what was told me by tlie near relation of a Priest, 
himself a Catholic, and a gentleman of learning and intelli- 
gence. This Priest made my informant promise that he would, 
on no accoimt, allow the Bambino to be borne into the bed- 
room of a sick lady, in whom they were both interested. 
"For," said he, "if they (the monks) troul)le her with it, 
and intrude tliemselves into her room, it will certainly kill 
her." !My informant accordingly looked out of the window 
wlion it came ; and, M^itli man}' thanks, declined to open the 
door. He endeavoured, in another case of which he liad no 
other knowledge than such as he gained as a passer-by at the 
moment, to prevent its being carried into a small unwhok>some 
chamber, where a poor giii was dying. But, he strove agiiinst 



ROME. 129 

it unsuccessfully, and she expired while the crowd were 
pressing round her bed. 

Among the people who drop into St. Peter's at their leisure, 
to kneel on the pavement, and say a quiet prayer, there are 
certain schools and seminaries, priestly and otherwise, tha« 
come in, twenty or thirty strong. These boys always kneel 
down in single file, one behind the other, with a tall grim 
master in a black govv^n, bringing up the rear : like a pack of 
cards arranged to be tumbled down at a touch, with a dispro- 
portionately large Knave of clubs at the end. When they 
have had a minute or so at the chief altar, they scramble up, 
and filing off to the chapel of the Madonna, or the sacrament, 
flop down again in the same order ; so that if anybody did 
stumble against the master, a general and sudden overthrow 
of the whole line must inevitably ensue. 

The scene in all the churches is the strangest possible. 
The same monotonous, heartless, drowsy chanting, always 
going on ; the same dark building, darker from the brightness 
of the street without ; the same lamps dimly burning ; the 
self-same peojDle kneeling here and there ; turned towards 
you, from one altar or other, the same priest's back, with 
the same large cross embroidered on it ; however different 
in size, in shape, in wealth, in architecture, this church is 
from that, it is the same thing still. There are the same dirty 
beggars stopping in their muttered praj-ers to beg ; the same 
miserable cripples exhibiting their deformity at the doors, 
the same blind men, rattling little pots like kitchen pepper- 
castors : their depositories for alms ; the same preposterous 
crowns of silver stuck upon the painted heads of single saints 
and Virgins in crowded pictures, so that a little figure on a 
mountain has a head-dress bigger than the temple in the 
foreground, or adjacent miles of landscape ; the same favourite 
shrine or figure, smothered with little silver hearts and crosses, 
and the like ; the staple trade and show of all the jewellers ; the 
same odd mixture of respect and indecorum, faith and phlegm : 
kneeling on the stones, and spitting on them, loudly ; getting 
up from prayers to beg a little, or to pursue some other 
worldly matter : and then kneeling down again, to resume 
the contrite supplication at the point where it was interrupted. 
In one church, a kneeling lady got up from her prayers, for a 
moment, to offer us her card, as a teacher of Music ; and in 
another, a sedate gentleman with a very thick walking-staff, 



130 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

arose from his devotions to belabour liis dog, who was growl- 
ing at another dog : and whose yelps and howls resounded 
through the church, as his master quietly relapsed into his 
former train of meditation — keeping his eye upon the dog, at 
the same time, nevertheless. 

Above all, there is always a receptacle for the contributions 
of the Faithful, in some form or other. Sometimes, it is a 
money-box, set up between the worshipper, and the wooden 
life-size figure of the Redeemer ; sometimes, it is a little 
chest for the maintenance of the Virgin; sometimes, an 
appeal on behalf of a popular Bambino ; sometimes, a bag 
at the end of a long stick, thrust among the people here and 
there, and vigilantly jingled by an active Sacristan j but there 
it always is, and, very often, in many shapes in the same 
church, and doing pretty well in all. Nor, is it wanting in 
the open air — the streets and roads — for, often as you are 
walking along, thinking about anj^thing rather than a tin- 
canister, that object pounces out upon you from a little 
house hj the wayside ; and on its top is painted, " For the 
Souls in Purgatory;" an appeal which the bearer repeats a 
great many times, as he rattles it before you, much as Punch 
rattles the cracked bell which his sanguine disposition makes 
an organ of. 

And this reminds me that some Roman altars of peculiar 
sanctity, bear the inscription, " Every mass performed at 
this altar, frees a soul from Purgatory." I have never been 
able to find out the charge for one of these services, but 
they should needs be expensive. There are several Crosses in 
Rome too, the kissing of which, confers indulgences for 
varj'ing terms. That in the centre of the Coliseum, is worth 
a hundred days ; and people may be seen kissing it from 
morning to night. It is curious that some of these crosses 
seem to acquire an arbitrary popularity ; this very one among 
them. In another part of tlie Coliseum there is a cross 
upon a marble slab, with the inscription, *'Who kisses this 
cross shall be entitled to Two liundrcd and forty days' indul- 
gence." But I saw no one person kiss it, though, day after 
day, I sat in the arena, and saw scores upon scores of peasants 
pass it, on their way to kiss the otlier. 

To single out details from the great di*eam of Roman 
Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world. But 
St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp mildewed vault of an old church 



ROME. 131 

in tlie outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost iu 
m.y mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with which its 
walls are covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints 
and early Christians ; and such a panorama of horror and 
butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were 
to eat a whole pig, raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being 
boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, 
worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped 
up small with hatchets : women having their breasts torn 
with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed 
off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, 
or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the 
fire : these are among the mildest subjects. So insisted on, 
and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the 
same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in 
Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much 
blood in him. 

There is an upper chamber in the Mamertine prisons, over 
what is said to have been — and very possibly may have been 
— the dungeon of St. Peter. This chamber is now fitted up as 
an oratory, dedicated to that saint ; and it lives, as a distinct 
and separate place, in my recollection, too. It is very small 
and low-roofed ; and the dread and gloom of the ponderous, 
obdurate old prison are on it, as if they had come up in a 
dark mist through the floor. Hanging on the walls, among 
the clustered votive offerings, are objects, at once strangely 
in keeping, and strangely at variance, with the place — rusty 
daggers, knives, pistols, clubs, divers instruments of violence 
and murder, brought here, fresh from use, and hung up to 
propitiate offended Heaven : as if the blood upon them would 
drain off in consecrated air, and have no voice to cry with. 
It is all so silent and so close, and tomb-like ; and the 
dungeons below, are so black and stealthy, and stagnant, and 
naked ; that this little dark spot becomes a dream within a 
dream : and in the vision of great churches which como 
rolling past me like a sea, it is a small wave by itself, that 
melts into no other wave, and does not flow on with the 
rest. 

It is an awful thing to think of the enormous caverns that 
are entered from some Roman churches, and undermine the 
city. JNIany churches have crypts and subterranean chapels 
of great size, which, in the ancient time, were hatha, and 



132 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

secret chambers of temples, and what not ; but I do not speai 
of them. Beneath the church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, 
there are the jaws of a terrific range of caverns, hewn out of 
the rock, and said to have another outlet underneath the 
Coliseum — tremendous darknesses of vast extent, half-buried in 
the earth and unexplorable, where the didl torches, flashed by 
the attendants, glimmer down long ranges of distant vaults 
branching to the right and left, like streets in a city of the 
dead ; and show the cold damp stealing down the walls, drip- 
drop, drip-drop, to join the pools of water that lie here and 
there, and never saw, and never wiU see, one ray of the sun. 
Some accounts make these the prisons of the wild beasts destined 
for the amphitheatre ; some the prisons of the condemned 
gladiators ; some, both. But the legend most appalling to 
the fancy is, that in the upper range (for there are two stories 
of these caves) the Early Christians destined to be eaten at 
the CoKseum Shows, heard the wild beasts, hungry for them, 
roaring down below; until, upon the night and solitude of 
their captivity, there burst the sudden noon and life of the 
vast theatre crowded to the parapet, and of these, their 
dreaded neighbours, bounding in ! 

Below the church of San Sebastiano, two miles beyond the 
gate of San Sebastiano, on the Appian Way, is the entrance to 
the catacombs of Rome — quarries in the old time, but after- 
wards the hiding-places of the Christians. These ghastly 
passages have been explored for twenty miles ; and form a 
chain of labyrinths, sixty miles in circumference. 

A gaunt Franciscan friar, with a wild bright eye, was our 
only guide, down into this profound and dreadful place. The 
narrow ways and openings hither and thither, coupled with 
the dead and heavy air, soon blotted out, in all of us, any 
recollection of the track by which we had come ; and I could 
not help thinkiag, " Good Heaven, if, in a sudden fit of mad- 
ness, he should dash the torches out, or if he should be seized 
with a fit, what would become of us ! " On we wandered, 
among martyrs' graves : passing great subterranean vaulted 
roads, diverging in all directions, and choked up with heaps 
of stones, that thieves and murderers may not take refuge 
there, and form a population under Rome, even worse than 
that which lives between it and tlie sun. Graves, graves, 
graves ; Graves of men, of women, of their little childre^n, who 
ran crying to the persecutors, '* We are Christians ! We are 



ROME. 133 

Cliristians 1" tliat tliey miglit be murdered witli their parents ; 
Graves with the pahn of martyrdom roughly cut into their 
stone boundaries, and little niches, made to hold a vessel of 
the martjrrs' blood ; Graves of some \yho lived down here, for 
years together, ministering to the rest, and preaching truth, 
and hope, and comfort, from the rude altars, that bear witness 
to their fortitude at this hour; more roomy graves, but far 
more terrible, where hundreds, being surprised, were hemmed 
in and walled up : buried before Death, and killed by slow 
starvation. 

'' The Triumphs of the Faith are not above ground in our 
splendid churches," said the friar, looking round upon us, as 
we stopped to rest in one of the low passages, with bones and 
dust surrounding us on every side. " They are here ! Among 
the Martyrs' Graves ! " He was a gentle, earnest man, and 
said it firom his heart; but when I thought how Christian 
men have dealt with one another ; how, perverting our most 
merciful religion, they have hunted down and tortured, burnt 
and beheaded, strangled, slaughtered, and oppressed each 
other ; I pictured to myself an agony surpassing any that this 
Dust had suffered with the breath of life yet lingering in it, 
and how these great and constant hearts would have been 
shaken^ — how they would have quailed and drooped — if a 
fore-knowledge of the deeds that professing Christians would 
commit in the Great Name for which they died, could have 
rent them with its own unutterable anguish, on the cruel 
wheel, and bitter cross, and in the fearful fire. 

Such are the spots and patches in my dream of churches, 
that remain apart, and keep their separate identity. I have 
a fainter recollection, sometimes of the relics ; of the frag- 
ments of the pillar of the Temple that was rent in twain ; of 
the partion of the table that was spread for the Last Supper ; 
of the well at which the woman of Samaria gave water to 
Our Saviour ; of two columns from the house of Pontius 
Pilate ; of the stone to which the Sacred hands were bound, 
when the scourging was performed ; of the gridiron of Saint 
Lawrence, and the stone below it, marked with the frying of 
his fat and blood ; these set a shadoT^^ mark on some cathe- 
drals, as an old story, or a fable might, and stop them for an 
instant, as they flit before me. The rest is a vast wilderness 
of consecrated buildings of all shapes and fancies, blending 
one with another ; of battered pillars of old Pagan temples, dug 



134 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

up from the ground, and forced, like giant captives, to siippoi*t 
the roofs of Christian churches ; of pictures, bad, and wonderful, 
and impious, and ridiculous ; of kneeling people, curling 
incense, tinkling bells, and sometimes (but not often) of a 
swelling organ ; of JNIadonne, with their breasts stuck full of 
swords, arranged in a half-circle like a modern fan ; of actual 
skeletons of dead saints, hideously attired in gaudy satins, 
sillvs, and velvets trimmed with gold : their withered crust of 
skull adorned with precious jewels, or with chaplets of crushed 
flowers ; sometimes, of people gathered round the pulpit, and 
a monk within it stretching out the crucifix, and preaching 
fiercely : the sun just streaming down through some high 
window on the sail-cloth stretched above him and across the 
church, to keep his high-pitched voice from being lost among 
the echoes of the roof. Then my tired memory comes out 
upon a flight of steps, where knots of people are asleep, 
or basking in the Light ; and strolls away, among the 
rags, and smells, and palaces, and hovels, of an old Italian 
street. 

On one Saturday morning (the eighth of March), a man 
was beheaded here. Nine or ten months before, he had way- 
laid a Bavarian countess, travelling as a pilgrim to Rome — 
alone and on foot, of course — and performing, it is said, that 
act of piety for the fourth time. He saw her change a 
piece of gold at Viterbo, where he lived ; followed her ; bore 
her company on her journey for some forty miles or more, on 
the treacherous pretext of protecting her; attacked her, in 
the fulfilment of his unrelenting purpose, on the Campngna, 
within a very short distance of Rome, near to what is called 
(but what is not) the Tomb of Nero ; robbed her ; and beat 
her to death with her own pilgrim's staff. He was newly 
married, and gave some of her apparel to his wife : saying 
that he had bought it at a fair. She, however, who had seen 
the pilgrim-countess passing through their town, recognised 
some trifle as having belonged to her. Her husband then 
told her what he had done. She, in confession, told a j^riest ; 
and the man was taken, within foui* days after the commission 
of tlie murder. 

There are no fixed times for the administration of justice, 
or its execution, in this unaccountable country ; and he had 
been in prison ever since. On the Friday, as he was dining 



ROME. 135 

with tlie other prisoners, they came and told him he was 
to be beheaded next morning, and took him away. It is 
very unusual to execute in Lent ; but his crime being a very 
bad one, it was deemed advisable to make an example of him 
at that time, when great numbers of pilgrims were coming 
towards Rome, from all parts, for the Holy Week. I heard 
of this on the Friday evening, and saw the bills up at the 
chui'ches, calling on the people to pray for the criminal's soul. 
So, I determined to go, and see him executed. 

The beheading was appointed for fourteen and a half o'clock, 
Roman time : or a quarter before nine in the forenoon. I 
had two friends with me ; and as we did not know but that 
the crowd might be very great, we were on the spot by half- 
past seven. The place of execution was near the church of San 
Giovanni decollate (a doubtful compliment to Saint John the 
Baptist) in one of the impassable back streets without any 
footway, of which a great part of Rome is composed — a 
street of rotten houses, which do not seem to belong to any- 
body, and do not seem to have ever been inhabited, and cer- 
tainly were never built on any plan, or for any particular 
purpose, and have no window-sashes, and are a little like 
deserted breweries, and might be warehouses but for having 
nothing in them. Opposite to one of these, a white house, 
the scaffold was built. An untidy, unpainted, uncouth, crazy- 
looking thing of course : some seven feet high, perhaps : with 
a tall, gallows-shaped frame rising above it, in which was the 
knife, charged with a ponderous mass of iron, all ready to 
descend, and glittering brightly in the morning-sun, whenever 
it looked out, now and then, from behind a cloud. 

There were not many people lingering about ; and these 
were kept at a considerable distance from the scaffold, by 
parties of the Pope's dragoons. Two or three hundred foot- 
soldiers were under arms, standing at ease in clusters here 
and there ; and the officers were walking up and down in twos 
and threes, chatting together, and smoking cigars. 

At the end of the street, was an open space, where there 
would be a dust-heap, and piles of broken crockery, and 
mounds of vegetable refuse, but for such things being thrown 
anywhere and everywhere in Rome, and favouring no particular 
sort of locality. We got into a kind of wash-house, belonging 
to a dwelling-house on this spot ; and standing there in an 
old cai't, and on a heap of cart wheels pUed against the wall, 



136 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

looked, througli a large grated window, at the scaffold, and 
straight down the street bejond it, until, in consequence of 
its turning off abruptly to the left, our perspective was brought 
to a sudden termination, and had a corpulent officer, in a 
cocked hat, for its crowning feature. 

Nine o'clock struck, and ten o'clock struck, and nothing 
happened. All the bells of all the churches rang as usual. 
A little parliament of dogs assembled in the open space, and 
chased each other, in and out among the soldiers. Fierce- 
looking Romans of the lowest class, in blue cloaks, russet 
cloaks, and rags uncloaked, came and went, and tall%:ed 
together. Women and children fluttered, on the skirts of the 
scanty crowd. One large muddy spot was left quite bare, like 
a bald place on a man's head. A cigar-merchant, with an 
earthen pot of charcoal ashes in one hand, went up and down, 
crying his wares. A pastrj^-merchant divided his attention 
between the scaffold and his customers. Boys tried to climb 
up walls, and tumbled down again. Priests and monks 
elbowed a passage for themselves among the people, and stood 
on tiptoe for a sight of the knife : then went away. Artists, 
in inconceivable hats of tlie middle-ages, and beards (thank 
Heaven !) of no age at all, flashed picturesque scowls about 
them from their stations in the tlirong. One gentleman (con- 
nected with the fine arts, I presume) went up and down in a 
pair of liessian-boots, with a red beard hanging down on liis 
breast, and his long and bright red hair, plaited into two tails, 
one on either side of his head ; which fell over his shoulders 
in front of him, very nearly to his waist, and were careftdly 
entwined and braided ! 

Eleven o'clock struck; and still nothing happened. A 
rumour got about, among the crowd, that the criminal would 
not confess ; in which case, the priests would keep him until the 
Ave jMaria (sunset) ; for it is their merciful custom never finally 
to turn the crucifix away from a man at that pass, as one 
refusing to be shriven, and consequently a sinner abandoned 
of the Saviour, until tlien. People began to drop off. The 
oflicers shrugged their shoulders and looked doubtful. The 
dragoons, who came riding up below our window, every now 
and then, to order an unlucky haoknoy-coach or cart away, as 
soon as it had comfortabl}' established itself and was covered 
with exulting people (but never before), became imperious, and 
quick-tempered. The bald place hadn't a straggling hair 



ROME. 137 

upon it ; and the corpulent officer, crowning the perspective, 
took a Tvorld of snuff. 

Suddenly, there was a noise of trumpets. "Attention!" 
was among the foot-soldiers instantly. They were marched 
up to the scaffold and formed round it. The dragoons galloped 
to their nearer stations too. The guillotine became the centre 
of a wood of bristling bayonets and shining sabres. The 
people closed round nearer, on the flank of the soldiery. A 
long straggling stream of men and boys, who had accompanied 
the procession from the prison, came pouring into the open 
space. The bald spot was scarcely distinguishable from the 
rest. The cigar and pastry-merchants resigned all thoughts 
of business, for the moment, and abandoning themselves 
wholly to pleasure, got good situations in the crowd. The 
perspective ended, now, in a troop of dragoons. And the 
corpulent officer, sword in hand, looked hard at a church close 
to him, which he could see, but we, the crowd, couM not. 

After a short delay, some monks were seen approaching to 
the scaffold from this church ; and above their heads, coming 
on slowly and gloomily, the effigy of Christ upon the cross, 
canopied with black. This was carried round the foot of the 
scaffold, to the front, and turned towards the criminal, that 
he might see it to the last. It was hardly in its place, when 
he appeared on the platform, bare-footed ; his hands bound ; 
and with the collar and neck of his shirt cut away, almost 
to the shoulder. A j^oung man — six-and-twenty — vigorously 
made, and well-shaped. Face pale ; small dark moustache ; 
and dark brown hair. 

He had refused to confess, it seemed, without first having 
his wife brought to see him ; and they had sent an escort for 
her, which had occasioned the delay. 

He immediately kneeled doT^Ti, below the knife. His neck 
fitting into a hole, made for the purpose, in a cross plank, 
was shut down, by another plank above ; exactly like the 
pillory. Immediately below him was a leathern bag. And 
into it his head rolled instantly. 

The executioner was holding it by the hair, and walking 
with it round the scaffold, showing it to the people, before one 
quite knew that the knife had fallen heavily, and with a 
rattling sound. 

"When it had travelled round the four sides of the scaffold, 
it was set ux^on a pole in fi'ont — a little patch of black and 



138 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

■wliite, for tlie long street to stare at, and tlie flies to settle 
on. The eyes were turned upward, as if he had avoided the 
sight of the leathern bag, and looked to the crucifix. Every 
tinge and hue of life had left it in that instant. It was dull, 
cold, livid, wax. The body also. 

There was a great deal of blood. When we left the window, 
and went close up to the scaffold, it was very dirt}^ ; one of the 
two men who were throwing water over it, turning to help 
the other lift the body into a shell, picked his way as through 
mire. A strange appearance was the apparent annihilation 
of the neck. The head was taken off so close, that it seemed 
as if the knife had narrowly escaped crushing the jaw, or 
shaving off the ear ; and the body looked as if there were 
nothing left above the shoulder. 

Nobody cared, or was at aU affected. There was no mani- 
festation of disgust, or pity, or indignation, or sorrow. ^My 
empty pockets were tried, several times, in the crowd imme- 
diately below the scaffold, as the corpse was being put into its 
coffin. It was an ugly, filthy, careless, sickening spectacle ; 
meaning nothing but butchery beyond the momentary interest, 
to the one wretched actor. Yes ! Such a sight has one 
meaning and one warning. Let me not forget it. The spe- 
culators in the lottery, station themselves at favourable points 
for counting the gouts of blood that spirt out, here or there; 
and buy that number. It is pretty sure to have a run upon it. 

The body was carted away in due time, the knife cleansed, 
the scaffold taken down, and all the hideous apparatus removed. 
The executioner : an outlaw ex officio (what a satire on the 
Pimishment !) who dare not, for his life, cross the Bridge of 
St. Angelo but to do his work : retreated to his lair, and the 
Bhow was over. 

At the head of the collections in the palaces of Rome, tlie 
"Vatican, of course, with its treasures of art, its enormous 
galleries, and staircases, and suites upon suites of immense 
chambers, ranks higliest and stands foremost. Many most 
uoble statues, and wonderful pictures, ai'e there ; nor is it 
heresy to say that there is a considerable amount of rubbish 
tliere, too. When any old jiiece of sculpture dug out of the 
gi'oimd, finds a place in a gallery because it is old, and widiout 
any reference to its intrinsic merits : and finds admirers by 
the hundi'ed, because it is there, and for no other reason on 



ROME. 139 

earth : tliere will be no lack of objects, very indifferent in the 
plain eyesigbt of any one wbo employs so vulgar a property, 
when he may wear the spectacles of Cant for less than nothing, 
and establish himself as a man of taste for the mere trouble of 
putting them on. 

I unreservedly confess, for myself, that I cannot leave my 
natural perception of what is natural and true, at a palace- 
door, in Italy or elsewhere, as I should leave my shoes if I 
were travelling in the East. I cannot forget that there are 
certain expressions of face, natural to certain passions, and as 
unchangeable in their nature as the gait of a lion, or the flight 
of an eagle. I cannot dismiss from my certain knowledge, 
such common-place facts as the ordinary proportions of men's 
arms, and legs, and heads ; and when I meet with performances 
that do violence to these experiences and recollections, no 
matter where they may be, I cannot honestly admire th§m, 
and think it best to say so ; in spite of high critical advice 
that we should sometimes feign an admiration, though we 
have it not. 

Therefore, I freely acknowledge that when I see a Jolly 
young Waterman representing a cherubim, or a Barclay and 
Perkins's Drayman depicted as an Evangelist, I see nothing 
to commend or admire in the performance, however great its 
reputed Painter. Neither am I partial to libellous Angels, who 
play on fiddles and bassoons, for the edification of sprawling 
yionks apparently in liquor. Nor to those Monsieur Tonsons 
of galleries. Saint Francis and Saint Sebastian ; both of whom 
I submit should have very uncommon and rare merits, as 
works of art, to justify their compound multiplication by 
Italian Painters. 

It seems to me, too, that the indiscriminate and determined 
raptiu'es in which some critics indulge, is incompatible with 
the true appreciation of the really great and transcendent 
works. I cannot imagine, for example, how the resolute 
champion of undeserving pictures can soar to the amazing 
beauty of Titian's great picture of the Assumption of the Virgin 
at Venice ; or how the man who is truly afiected by the sub- 
limity of that exquisite production, or who is truly sensible of 
the beauty of Tintoretto's great pictiu-e of the Assembly of 
the Blessed in the same place, can discern in Michael Angelo's 
Last Judgment, in the Sistine chapel, any general idea, or 
one pervading thought, in harmony with the stupendous 



140 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

subject. He who "will contemplate Raphael's masterpiece, the 
Transfiguration, and will go away into another chamber of 
that same Vatican, and contemplate another design of Raphael, 
representing (in incredible caricature) the miraculous stopping 
of a great fire by Leo the Fourth — and who will say that he 
admires them both, as works of extraordinary genius — must, 
as I think, be wanting in his powers of perception in one of 
the two instances, and, probably, in the high and lofty one. 

It is easy to suggest a doubt, but I have a great doubt 
whether, sometimes, the rules of art are not too strictly ob- 
served, and whether it is quite well or agreeable that we 
should know beforehand, where this figure will be turning 
round, and where that figure will be lying down, and where 
there will be drapery in folds, and so forth. When I observe 
heads inferior to the subject, in pictures of merit, in Italian 
galleries, I do not attach that reproach to the Painter, for 
I have a suspicion that these great men, who were, of ne- 
cessity, very much in the hands of monks and priests, painted 
monks and priests a great deal too often. I frequently see, in 
pictures of real power, heads quite below the story and the 
painter : and I invariably observe that those heads are of the 
Convent stamp, and have their counterparts among the 
Convent inmates of this hour ; so, I have settled with myself 
that, in such cases, the lameness was not with the painter, but 
with the vanity and ignorance of certain of his employers, who 
would be apostles — on canvass, at all events. 

The exquisite grace and beauty of Canova's statues ; the 
wonderful gravity and repose of many of the ancient works in 
sculpture, both in the Capitol and the Vatican ; and the 
strength and fire of many others ; are, in their difierent ways, 
beyond all reach of words. They are especially impressive 
and delightful, after the Avorks of Bernini and his disciples, 
in which the churches of Rome, from St. Peter's downward, 
abound ; and A^hich are, I verily believe, the most detestable 
class of productions in the wide world. I would infinitely 
rather (as mere works of art) look upon the three deities of 
the Past, tlie Present, and the Future, in the Chinese Col- 
lection, than upon the best of these breezry- maniacs ; whose 
every fold of drapery is blown inside-out ; whose smallest 
vein, or artery, is as big as an ordinary forefinger; whose 
hair is like a nest of lively snakes ; and whose attitudes put 
ail otlier extravagance to shame. Insomuch that I do honestly 



HOME. 141 

believe, there can "be no place in the world, where snch 
intolerable abortions, begotten of the sculptor's chisel, are to 
be found in such profusion, as in Rome. 

There is a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, in the 
Vatican ; and the ceilings of the rooms in which they are 
arranged, are painted to represent a star-light sky in the 
Desert. It may seem an odd idea, but it is very effective. 
The grim, half-human monsters from the temples, look more 
grim and monstrous underneath the deep dark blue ; it sheds 
a strange uncertain gloomy air on everything — a mystery 
adapted to the objects ; and you leave them, as you find them, 
shrouded in a solemn night. 

In the private palaces, pictures are seen to the best ad- 
vantage. There are seldom so many in one place that the 
attention need become distracted, or the eye confused. You 
see them very leisiu-ely ; and are rarely interrupted by a crowd 
of people. There are portraits innumerable, by Titian, and 
Rembrandt, and Vandyke ; heads by Guide, and Domeni- 
chino, and Carlo Dolci ; various subjects by Correggio, and 
Murillo, and Raphael, and Salvator Rosa, and Spagnoletto — 
many of which it would be difficult, indeed, to praise too 
highly, or to praise enough ,• such is their tenderness and 
grace ; their noble elevation, purity, and beauty. 

The portrait of Beatrice di Cenci, in the Palazzo Berberini, 
is a picture almost impossible to be forgotten. Through the 
transcendent sweetness and beauty of the face, there is a 
something shining out, that haunts me. I see it now, as I 
see this paper, or my pen. The head is loosely draped in 
white ; the light hair falling down belov/ the linen folds. She 
has turned suddenly towards you ; and there is an expression 
in the eyes — although they are very tender and gentle — as if 
the wildness of a momentary terror, or distraction, had been 
struggled with and overcome, that instant ; and nothing but 
a celestial hope, and a beautiful sorrow, and a desolate earthly 
helplessness remained. Some stories say that Guide painted 
it, the night before her execution ; some other stories, that he 
painted it from memory, after having seen her, on her way to 
the scaffold. I am willing to believe that, as you see her on 
his canvass, so she turned towards him, in the crowd, from 
the first sight of the axe, and stamped upon his mind a look 
which he has stamped on mine as though I had stood beside 
hiiu in the concourse. The guilty palace of the Cenci : 



.142 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

bligliting a whole quarter of the town, as it stands withering 
away b}'- grains : had that face, to my fancy, in its dismal 
porch, and at its black blind windows, and flitting up and 
do^yn its di'eary stairs, and growing out of the darkness of 
its ghostly galleries. . The History is wi'itten in the Painting ; 
written, in the dying girl's face, by Nature's owti hand. 
And oh ! how in that one touch she puts to flight (instead of 
making kin) the puny world that claim to be related to her, 
in right of poor conventional forgeries ! 

I saw in the Palazzo Spada, the statue of Pompey ; the 
statue at whose base Csesar fell. A stern, tremendous figure ! 
I imagined one of greater finish : of the last refinement : full 
of delicate touches : losing its distinctness, in the giddy eyes 
of one whose blood was ebbing before it, and settling into 
some such rigid majesty as tliis, as Death came creeping over 
the upturned face. 

The excursions in the neighbourhood of Rome are charming, 
and would be full of interest were it only for the changing 
views they afford, of the wild Campagna. But, every inch of 
ground, in every direction, is rich in associations, and in 
natural beauties. There is Albano, with its lovely lake and 
wooded shore, and with its wine, that certainly has not im- 
proved since the days of Horace, and in these times hardly 
justifies his paneg}Tic. There is squalid Tivoli, with the river 
Anio, diverted from its course, and plunging down, headlong, 
some eighty feet in search of it. With its picturesque Temple 
of the Sibyl, perched high on a crag ; its minor waterfalls 
glancing and sparkling in the sun ; and one good cavern 
yawning darkly, where the river takes a fearful plunge and 
shoots on, low down under beetling rocks. There, too, is 
the Villa d'Este, deserted and decaying among groves of 
melancholy pine and C}q3ress trees, where it seems to lie in 
state. Then, there is Frascati, and, on the steep above it, the 
ruins of Tusculum, where Cicero lived, and T\Tote, and 
adorned his favourite house (some fi'agments of it may yet 
be seen thei'e), and where Cato was born. We saw its ruined 
amphitheatre on a grey dull day, when a shrill March wind 
was blowdng, and when the scattered stones of the old city lay 
strewn about the lonely eminence, as desolate and dead as the 
ashes of a long extinguished fire. 

One day, we walked out, a little party of three, to Albano, 
fourteen miles distant ; possessed by a great desire to ^ 



HOlVre. 143 

there, by tlie ancient Appian way, long since mined and 
overgrown. "We started at half past seven in the morning, 
and within an hour or so, were out upon the open Campagna. 
For twelve miles, we went climbing on, over an unbroken 
succession of mounds, and heaps, and hills, of ruin. Tombs 
and temples, overthrown and prostrate ; small fragments of 
columns, friezes, pediments ; great blocks of granite and 
marble ; mouldering arches, grass-grown and decayed ; ruin 
enough to build a spacious city from ; lay strewn about us. 
Sometimes, loose walls, built up from these fragments by the 
shepherds, came across our path ; sometimes, a ditch between 
two mounds of broken stones, obstructed our progress ; some- 
times, the fragments themselves, rolling from beneath our 
feet, made it a toilsome matter to advance ; but it was always 
ruin. Now, we tracked a piece of the old road, above the 
ground ; now traced it, underneath a grassy covering, as if 
that were its grave; but all the way was ruin. In the 
distance, ruined aqueducts went stalking on their giant course 
along the plain ; and every breath of wind that swept towards 
us, stirred early flowers and grasses, springing up, spon- 
taneously, on miles of ruin. The unseen larks above us, 
who alone disturbed the awful silence, had their nests in ruin ; 
and the fierce herdsmen, clad in sheepskins, who now and then 
scowled out upon us from their sleeping nooks, were housed in 
ruin. The aspect of the desolate Campagna in one direction, 
where it was most level, reminded me of an American prairie ; 
but what is the solitude of a region where men have never 
dwelt, to that of a Desert, where a mighty race have left their 
foot-prints in the earth from which they have vanished ; where 
the resting-places of their Dead, have fallen Hke their Dead ; 
and the broken hour-glass of Time is but a heap of idle dust ! 
Returning, by the road, at sunset ! and looking, from the 
distance, on the course we had taken in the morning, I almost 
felt (as I had felt when I first saw it, at that hour) as if the 
sun would never rise again, but looked its last, that night, 
upon a ruined world. 

To come again on Rome, by moonKght, after such an 
expedition, is a fitting close to such a day. The narrow 
streets, devoid of footways, and choked, in every obscure 
corner, by heaps of dunghill-rubbish, contrast so strongly, in 
their cramped dimensions, and their filth, and darkness, with 
the broad square before some haughty church : in the centi'e 



144 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

of M'liich, a hieroglvphic-covered obelisk, broiiglit from Egypt 
in the days of the Emperors, looks strangely on the foreig-n 
scene about it ; or perhaps an ancient pillar, with its honoured 
statue overthrown, supports a Christian saint : Marcus Anreliua 
giving place to Paul, and Trajan to St. Peter. Then, there 
are the ponderous buildings reared from the spoliation of the 
Coliseum, shutting out the moon, like mountains : while here 
and there, are broken arches and rent walls, through which it 
gushes freely, as the life comes pouring from a wound. 
The little town of miserable houses, walled, and shut in by 
barred gates, is the quarter where the Jews are locked up 
nightly, when the clock strikes eight — a miserable place, 
densely populated, and reeking with bad odours, but where 
the people are industrious and money- getting. In the day- 
time, as you make your way along the narrow streets, you see 
them all at work : upon the pavement, oftener than in their 
dark and frouzy shops : furbishing old clothes, and driving 
bargains. 

Crossing from these patches of thick darkness, out into the 
moon once more, the fountain of Trevi, welling from i\ 
hiandred jets, and roiling over mimic rocks, is silvery to the 
eye and ear. In the narrow little throat of street, beyond, a 
booth, dressed out with flaring lamps, and boughs of trees, 
attracts a group of sulky Romans round its smoking coppers 
of hot broth, and cauliflower stew ; its trays of fried fish, and 
its flasks of wine. As you rattle round the sharply-twisting 
corner, a lumbering sound is heard. The coachman stops 
abruptly, and uncovers, as a van comes slowly by, preceded 
by a man who bears a large cross ; by a torch-bearer ; and a 
priest : the latter chaunting as he goes. It is the Dead Cart, 
with the bodies of the poor, on their way to burial in the 
Sacred Field outside the walls, where they will be thrown into 
the pit that will be covered with a stone to-night, and sealed 
up for a year. 

But whether, in this ride, you pass by obelisks, or columns : 
ancient temples, theatres, houses, porticoes, or forums : it is 
strange to see, how every fragment, Avhenever it is possible, 
has been blended into some modern structure, and made to 
serve some modern purpose — a wall, a dwelling-place, a 
granary, a stable — some use for which it never was designed, 
and associated with -which it cannot otherwise than lamely 
assort. It is stranger still, to see how many ruins of the old 



EOME. 145 

mytliology: how many fragments of ol)solete legend and 
observance : have been incorporated into the worship of 
christian altars here ; and how, in numberless respects, the 
false faith and the true are fused into a monstrous union. 

From one part of the city, looking out beyond the walls, a 
squat and stunted pyramid (the burial-place of Caius Cestius) 
makes an opaque triangle in the moonlight. But, to an 
EngKsh traveller, it serves to mark the grave of Shelley too, 
whose ashes lie beneath a little garden near it. Nearer still, 
almost within its shadow, lie the bones of Keats, ''whose 
name is '^T?it in water," that shines brightly in the landscape 
of a cahn Italian night. 

The Holy Week in Rome is supposed to offer great 
attractions to all visitors ; but, saving for the sights of Easter 
Sunday, I would counsel those who go to Rome for its own 
interest, to avoid it at that time. The ceremonies, in general, 
are of the most tedious and wearisome kind ; the heat and 
crowd at every one of them, painfully oppressive ; the noise, 
hubbub, and confusion, quite distracting. We abandoned the 
pursuit of these shows, very early in the proceedings, and 
betook ourselves to the Ruins again. But, we plunged into 
the crowd for a share of the best of the sights ; and what we 
saw, I will describe to you. 

At the Sistine chapel, on the Wednesday, we saw very little, 
for by the time we reached it (though we were early) the 
besieging crowd had filled it to the door, and overflowed into 
the adjoining hall, where they were struggling, and squeezing, 
and mutually expostulating, and making great rushes every 
time a lady was brought out faint, as if at least fifty people 
could be accommodated in her vacant standing-room. Hanging 
in the doorway of the chapel, was a heavy curtain, and this 
curtain, some twenty people nearest to it, in their anxiety to 
hear the chaunting of the Miserere, were continually plucking 
at, in opposition to each other, that it might not fall down 
and stifle the sound of the voices. The consequence was, that 
it occasioned the most extraordinary confusion, and seemed to 
wind itself about the unwary, like a Serpent. Now, a lady 
was wrapped up in it, and couldn't be unwound. Now, the 
voice of a stifling gentleman was heard inside it, beseeching 
to be let out. Now, two muffled arms, no man could say of 
which seX; strug^ed in. it as in a eack. Now, it was carried 



146 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

by a rush, bodily overhead into the chapel, like an awning. 
Now, it came out the other way, and blinded one of the Tope's 
Swiss Guard who had arrived, that moment, to set things to 
rights. 

Being seated at a little distance, among two or three of the 
Pope's gentlemen, who were very weary and counting the 
minutes — as perhaps His Holiness was too — we had better 
opportunities of observing this eccentric entertainment, than 
of hearing the Miserere. Sometimes, there was a swell of 
mournful voices that sounded very pathetic and sad, and 
died away, into a low strain again ; but that was aU we 
heard. 

At another time, there was the Exhibition of the Relics in 
Saint Peter's, which took place at between six and seven 
o'clock in the evening, and was striking from the cathedral 
being dark and gloomy, and having a great many people in it. 
The place into which the relics were brought, one by one, by 
a party of three priests, was a high balcony near the chief 
altar. This was the only lighted part of the church. There 
are always a hundred and twelve lamps burning near the 
altar, and there were two tall tapers, besides, near the black 
Btatue of St. Peter ; but tliese were nothing in such an 
immense edifice. The gloom, and the general upturning of 
faces to the balcony, and the prostration of true believers on 
the pavement, as shining objects, like pictures or looking- 
glasses, were brought out and shown, had something efiective 
in it, despite the very preposterous manner in whicli they 
were held up for the general edification, and the great 
elevation at which they were displayed; which one would 
think rather calculated to diminish the comfort derivable from 
a full conviction of their being genuine. 

On the Thursday, we went to see the Pope convey the 
Sacrament from the Sistine chapel, to deposit it in the Capella 
Paolina, another chapel in the Vatican ; — a ceremony emble- 
matical of the entombment of the Saviour before His 
Resurrection. We waited in a great gallery with a great 
crowd of people (three-fourths of them English) for an hour 
Dr so, while they were chaunting the Miserere, in the Sistine 
chapel again. Both chapels opened out of the gallery; and 
the general attention was concentrated on the occasional 
opening and shutting of the door of the one for which the 
Pope wae ultimately bound. None of these openings disclosed 



ROME. 147 

anytMng more tremendous tlian a man on a ladder, lighting a 
jgreat quantity of candles; but at each and every opening, 
there was a terrific rush made at this ladder and this man, 
something like (I should think) a charge of the heavy British 
cavalry at Waterloo. The man was never brought down, 
however, nor the ladder ; for it performed the strangest antics 
in the world among the crowd — where it was carried by the 
man, when the candles were all lighted; and finally it was 
stuck up against the gallery wall, in a very disorderly manner, 
just before the opening of the other chapel, and the com- 
mencement of a new chaunt, announced the approach of his 
Holiness. At this crisis, the soldiers of the guard, who had 
been poking the crowd into all sorts of shapes, formed down 
the gallery : and the procession came up, between the two 
lines they made. 

There were a few choristers, and then a great many priests, 
walking two and two, and carrying — the good-looking priests 
at least — their lighted tapers, so as to throw the light with a 
good effect upon their faces : for the room was darkened. 
Those who were not handsome, or who had not long beards, 
carried their tapers anyhow, and abandoned themselves to 
spiritual contemplation. Meanwhile, the chaunting was very 
monotonous and dreary. The procession passed on, slowly, 
into the chapel, and the drone of voices went on, and came 
on, with it, until the Pope himself appeared, walking under a 
white satin canopy, and bearing the covered Sacrament in 
both hands ; cardinals and canons clustered round him, 
making a brilliant show. The soldiers of the guard knelt 
down as he passed ; all the bystanders bowed ; and so he 
passed on into the chapel : the white satin canopy being 
removed from over him at the door, and a white satin parasol 
hoisted over his poor old head, in place of it. A few more 
couples brought up the rear, and passed into the chapel also. 
Then, the chapel door was shut ; and it was all over ; and 
everybody hurried off headlong, as for life or death, to see 
something else, and say it wasn't worth the trouble. 

I think the most popular and most crowded sight (excepting 
those of Easter Sunday and Monday, which are open to aU 
classes of people) was the Pope washing the feet of Thirteen 
men, representing the twelve apostles, and Judas Iscariot. 
The place in which this pious office is performed, is one of 
the chapels of St. Peter's, Avhich is gaily decorated for the 

l2 



148 PICTURES FKOM ITALY. 

occasion ; the thirteen sitting " all of a tow" on a very high 
bench, and looking particularly uncomfortable, mth the 
eyes of Heaven knows how many English, French, Americans, 
Swiss, Germans, Russians, Swedes, Norwegians, and other 
foreigners, nailed to their faces all the time. They are robed 
in white ; and on their heads they wear a stiff white cap, 
like a large English porter-pot, without a handle. Each 
carries in his hand, a nosegay, of the size of a fine cauliflower ; 
and two of them, on this occasion, wore spectacles : which, 
remembering the characters they sustained, I thought a droll 
appendage to the costume. There was a great eye to 
character. St. John was represented by a good-looking youiig 
man. St. Peter, by a grave-looking old gentleman, with a 
flowing brown beard ; and Judas Iscariot by such an enormous 
hypocrite (I could not make out, though, whether the 
expression of his face was real or assumed) that if he had 
acted the part to the death and had gone away and hanged 
himself, he would have left notliing to be desired. 

As the two large boxes, appropriated to ladies, at this 
sight, were full to the throat, and getting near was hopeless, 
we posted off, along with a great crowd, to be in time at the 
Table, where the Pope, in person, waits on these Thirteen; 
and after a prodigious struggle at the Vatican staii'case, and 
several personal conflicts with the Swiss guard, the whole 
crowd swept into the room. It was a long gallery hung with 
drapery of white and red, with another great box for ladies 
(who are obliged to dress in black at these ceremonies, and to 
wear black veils), a royal box for the King of Naples, and 
his party; and the table itself, which, set out like a ball 
supper, and ornamented with golden figures of the real 
apostles, was arranged on an elevated platform on one side of 
the gallery. The counterfeit apostles' knives and forks were 
laid out on that side of the table which was nearest to the 
wall, so that they might be stared at again, without let or 
hindrance. 

The body of the room was full of male strangers ; the 
crowd immense ; the heat very great ; and the pressure 
sometimes frightful. It was at its height when the stream 
came pouring in, from the feet- washing ; and then there 
were such shrieks and outcries, that a party of Piedmontese 
dragoons went to the rescue of the Swiss guard, and helped 
them to calm the tumult. 



ROME. . 149 

Tlie ladles were particularly ferocious, in their struggles 
for places. One lady of my acquaintance was seized round 
the waist, in the ladies' box, by a strong matron, and hoisted 
out of her place ; and there was another lady (in a back row 
in the same box) who improved her position by sticking a 
large pin into the ladies before her. 

The gentlemen about me were remarkably anxious to see 
what was on the table ; and one Englishman seemed to have 
embarked the whole energy of his nature in the determination 
to discover whether there was any mustard. " By Jupiter 
there 's vinegar ! ^' I heard him say to his friend, after he had 
stood on tiptoe an immense time, and had been crushed and 
beaten on all sides. ''And there's oil!! I saw them 
distinctly, in cruets ! Can any gentleman, in front there, see 
mustard on the table ? Sir, will you oblige me ! Do you see 
aMustard-Pot?" 

The apostles and Judas appearing on the platform, after 
much expectation, were marshalled, in line, in front of the 
table, with Peter at the top ; and a good long stare was 
taken at them by the company, while twelve of them took a 
long smell at their nosegays, and Judas — moving his lips very 
obtrusively — engaged in inward prayer. Then, the Pope, 
clad in a scarlet robe, and wearing on his head a skull-cap of 
white satin, appeared in the midst of a crowd of Cardinals and 
other dignitaries, and took in his hand a little golden ewer, 
from which he poured a little water over one of Peter's hands, 
while one attendant held a golden basin; a second, a fine 
cloth; a third, Peter's nosegay, which was taken from him 
during the operation. This his Holiness performed, with 
considerable expedition, on every man in the line (Judas, I 
observed, to be particularly overcome by his condescension) ; 
and then the whole Thirteen sat down to dinner. Grace said 
by the Pope. Peter in the chair. 

There was white wine, and red wine : and the dinner 
looked very good. The courses appeared in portions, one for 
each apostle ; and these being presented to the Pope, by 
Cardinals upon their knees, were by him handed to the 
Thirteen. The manner in which Judas grew more white- 
livered over liis victuals, and languished, with his head on 
one side, as if he had no appetite, defies all description. 
Peter was a good, sound, old man, and went in, as the 
saying is, '' to win ; " eating everything that was given liim 



150 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

(lie got tlie "best : being first in the tow) and saying nothing 
to anybody. The dishes appeared to be chiefly composed "of 
fish and vegetables. The Pope helped the Thirteen to wine 
also ; and, during the whole dinner, somebody read something 
aloud, out of a large book — the Bible, I presume — which 
nobody could hear, and to which nobody paid the least 
attention^ The Cardinals, and other attendants, smiled to 
each other, from time to time, as if the thing were a great 
farce ; and if they thought so, there is little doubt they were 
perfectly right. His Holiness did what he had to do, as a 
sensible man gets through a troublesome ceremony, and 
seemed very glad when it was all over. 

The Pilgrims' Suppers : where lords and ladies waited on 
the Pilgrims, in token of humility, and dried their feet when 
they had been well washed by deputy : were very attractive. 
But, of all the many spectacles of dangerous reliance on 
outward observances, in themselves mere empty forms, none 
struck me half so much as the Scala Santa, or Holy Staircase, 
wdiich I saw several times, but to the greatest advantage, or 
disadvantage, on Good Friday. 

This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, 
said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house, and to be the 
identical stairs on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down 
from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend it, only on their 
knees. It is steep ; and, at the summit, is a chapel, reported 
to be full of relics ; into which they peep through some iron 
bars, and then come do^Ti again, by one of two side staircases, 
which are not sacred, and may be walked on. 

On Good Friday, there were, on a moderate computation, a 
hundred people, slowly shuf0.ing up these stairs, on their 
knees, at one time ; while others, who were going up, or had 
come do^Ti — and a few who had done botli, and were going 
up again for the second time — stood loitering in the porch 
below, where an old gentleman in a sort of watch-box, rattled 
a tin canister, with a slit in the top, incessantly, to remind 
them that he took the money. The majority were country- 
people, male and female. There were four or five Jesuit 
priests, hoAvever, and some half-dozen well-dressed women. 
A whole school of boys, twenty at least, were about half-way 
up — evidently enjoying it very much. They were all wedged 
together, pretty closely ; but the rest of the company gave 
the boys as wide a berth as possible, in consecjuence of theii 



ROME. 151 

betraying some recTdessness in the management of tlieir 
boots. 

I never, in my life, saw anything at once so ridiculous, and 
60 unpleasant, as this sight — ridiculous in the absurd incidents 
inseparable from it ; and unpleasant in its senseless and 
unmeaning degradation. There are two steps to begin with, 
and then a rather broad landing. The more rigid climbers 
went along this landing on their knees, as well as up the 
stairs ; and the figures they cut, in their shuiSing progress 
over the level surface, no description can paint. Then, to 
see them watch their opportunity from the porch, and cut in 
where there was a place next the wall I And to see one man 
with an umbrella (brought on purpose, for it was a fine day) 
hoisting himself, unlawfully, from stair to stair ! And to 
observe a demure lady of fifty-five or so, looking back, every 
now and then, to assure herself that her legs were properly 
disposed ! 

There were such odd differences in the speed of different 
people, too. Some got on, as if they were doing a match 
against time ; others stopped to say a prayer on every step. 
This man touched every stair with his forehead, and kissed it; 
that man scratched his head all the way. The boys got on 
brilliantly, and were up and down again before the old lady 
had accomplished her haK dozen stairs. But most of the 
Penitents came down, very sprightly and fresh, as having 
done a real good substantial deed which it would take a good 
deal of sin to counterbalance ; and the old gentleman in the 
watch-box was down upon them with his canister while they 
were in this humour, I promise you. 

As if such a progress were not in its nature inevitably 
droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden 
figure on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer; 
so rickety and unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person 
kissed the figure, with more than usual devotion, or threw a 
coin into the saucer, with more than common readiness (for it 
served in this respect as a second or supplementary canister), 
it gave a great leap and rattle, and nearly shook the attendant 
lamp out : horribly frightening the people further down, and 
throwing the guilty party into unspeakable embarrassment. 

On Easter Sunday, as well as on the preceding Thursday, 
the Pope bestows his henediction on the people, from the 
balcony in front of St. Peter's. This Easter Sunday was a 



152 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

day so bright and blue : so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully 
bright : that all the previous bad weather vanished from the 
recollection in a moment. I had seen the Thursday's 
Benediction dropping damply on some hundreds of umbrellas, 
but there was not a sparkle then, in all the hundred fountains 
of Rome — such fountains as they are I — and on this Sunday 
morning, they were running diamonds. The miles of miser- 
able streets through which we drove (compelled to a certain 
course by the Pope's dragoons : the Roman police on such 
occasions) were so full of colour, that nothing in them was 
capable of wearing a faded aspect. The common people came 
out in their gayest di'esses ; the richer people in their smartest 
vehicles ; Cardinals rattled to the church of the Poor Fisher- 
men in their state carriages; shabby magnificence flaunted 
its thread-bare liveries and tarnished cocked hats, in the sun ; 
and every coach in Rome was put in requisition for the Great 
Piazza of St. Peter's. 

One hundred and fifty thousand people were there at least! 
Yet there was ample room. How many carriages were there, 
I don't know ; yet there was room for them too, and to spare. 
The great steps of the church were densely crowded. There 
were many of the Contadini, from Albano (who delight in 
red) in that part of the square, and the mingling of bright 
colours in the crowd was beautiful. Below the steps the 
troops were ranged. In the magnificent proportions of the 
place, they looked like a bed of flowers. Sulky Romans, 
lively peasants from the neighbouring country, groups of 
pilgrims from distant parts of Italy, sight-seeing foreigners of 
all nations, made a murmur in the clear air, like so many 
insects ; and high above them all, plashing and bubbling, and 
making rainbow colours in the light, the two delicious foun- 
tains welled and tumbled bountifully. 

A kind of bright carpet was hung over the front of the 
balcony ; and the sides of the great window were bedecked 
with crimson drapery. An awning was stretched, too, over 
the top, to screen the old man from the hot rays of the sun. 
As noon approached, all eyes were turned up to this window. 
In due time, the chair was seen approaching to the front, 
wdth the gigantic fans of peacock's feathers, close beliind. 
Tlie doll within it (for the balcony is very high) tlien rose up, 
and stretclied out its tiny arms, wliile all the male spectators 
in the square uncovered, and some, but not by any means the 



EOME. 153 

greater part, kneeled down. The guns upon the ramparts of 
the Castle of St. Angelo proclaimed, next moment, that the 
benediction was given ; drums beat ; trumpets sounded ; 
arms clashed ; and the great mass below, suddenly breaking 
into smaller heaps, and scattering here and there in rills, was 
stirred like particoloured sand. 

What a bright noon it was, as we rode away ! The Tiber 
was no longer yellow, but blue. There was a blush on the 
old bridges, that made them fresh and hale again. The 
Pantheon, with its majestic front, all seamed and furrowed 
like an old face, had summer light upon its battered walls. 
Every squalid and desolate hut in the Eternal City (bear 
witness every grim old palace, to the filth and misery of the 
plebeian neighbour that elbows it, as certain as Time has laid 
its grip on its patrician head !) was fresh and new with som.e 
ray of the sun. The very prison in the crowded street, a 
whirl of carriages and people, had some stray sense of the 
day, dropping through its chinks and crevices : and dismal 
prisoners who could not wind their faces round the barricading 
of the blocked- up windows, stretched out their hands, and 
clinging to the rusty bars, turned them towards the overflowing 
street : as if it were a cheerful fire, and could be shared in, 
that way. 

But, when the night came on, without a cloud to dim the 
full moon, what a sight it was to see the Great Square full 
once more, and the whole church, from the cross to the 
ground, lighted with innumerable lanterns, tracing out the 
architecture, and winking and shining all round the colonnade 
of the piazza ! And what a sense of exultation, joy, delight, 
it was, when the great bell struck half-past seven — on the 
instant — to behold one bright red mass of fire, soar gallantly 
from the top of the cupola to the extremest summit of the 
cross, and the moment it leaped into its place, become the 
signal of a bursting out of countless lights, as great, and red, 
and blazing as itself, from every part of the gigantic church ; 
so that every cornice, capital, and smallest ornament of stone, 
expressed itself in fire : and the black solid groundwork of 
the enormous dome, seemed to grow transparent as an e^g^- 
sheU! 

A train of gunpowder, an electric chain — nothing could be 
fired, more suddenly and swiftly, than this second illumina- 
tion J and when we had got away, and gone upon a distant 



154 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

height, and looked towards it t^YO hours afterwards, there it 
8till stood, shining and glittering in the calm night like a 
jewel ! Not a line of its proportions wanting ; not an angle 
blunted ; not an atom of its radiance lost. 

The next night — Easter Monday — there was a great display 
of fireworks from the Castle of St. Angelo. We hired a room 
in an opposite house, and made our way, to our places, in 
good time, through a dense mob of people choking up the 
square in front, and all the avenues leading to it ; and so 
loading the bridge by which the castle is approached, that it 
seemed ready to sink into the rapid Tiber below. There are 
statues on this bridge (execrable works) and, among them, 
great vessels full of burning tow were placed : glaring 
strangely on the faces of the crowd, and not less strangely on 
the stone counterfeits above them. 

The show began with a tremendous discharge of cannon ; 
and then, for twenty minutes, or half an hour, the whole 
castle was one incessant sheet of fire, and labja^inth of blazing 
wheels of every colour, size, and speed : wliile rockets 
streamed into the sky, not by ones or twos, or scores, but 
hundreds at a time. The concluding burst — the Girandola — 
was like the blowing up into the air of the whole massive 
castle, without smoke or dust. 

In half an hour afterwards, the immense concourse had 
dispersed; the moon was looking calmly down upon her 
wrinkled image in the river ; and half a dozen men and boys, 
with bits of lighted candle in their hands : moving here and 
there, in search of anything worth having, that might have 
been dropped in the press : had the whole scene to 
themselves. 

By way of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, 
after all this firing and booming, to take our leave of the 
Coliseum. I had seen it by moonlight before (I never could 
get through a day without going back to it), but its tremen- 
dous solitude that night is past all telliDg. The ghostly 
pillars in the Forum ; the Triumphal Arches of Old Emperors ; 
those enormous masses of ruin which were once their palaces ; 
the grass-grown mounds that mark the graves of ruined 
temples ; the stones of the Via Sacra, smooth with the tread 
of feet in ancient Rome ; even these were dimmed, in their 
transcendant melancholy, by the dark ghost of its bloody 
holidays, erect and grim j haunting the old scene j despoiled 



ROME. 155 

by pillaging Popes and fighting Princes, but not laid ; wring- 
ing wild hands of weed, and grass, and bramble ; and 
lamenting to tbe night in every gap and broken arch — the 
shadow of its awful self, immovable ! 

As we lay down on the grass of the Campagna, next day, 
on our way to Florence, hearing the larks sing, we saw that 
a little wooden cross had been erected on the spot where the 
poor Pilgrim Countess was murdered. So, we piled some 
loose stones about it, as the beginning of a mound to her 
memory, and wondered if we should ever rest there again, 
and look back at Rome. 



A RAPID DIORAMA- 



We are iDouiid for Naples ! And vre cross ihe fhresliold 
of the Eternal City at yonder gate, tlie Gate of San Giovanni 
Laterano, where the two last objects that attract the notice of 
a departing visitor, and the two first ohjects that attract the 
notice of an arri^'ing one, are a proud church and a decaying 
ruin — good emblems of Rome. 

Our way Kes over the Campagna, which looks more solemn 
on a bright blue day like this, than beneath a darker sky ; 
the great extent of ruin being plainer to the eye : and the 
sunshine through the arches of the broken aqueducts, show- 
ing other broken arches shining through them in the melancholy 
distance. When we have traversed it, and look back from 
Albano, its dark undiLlating surface lies below us like a stag- 
nant lake, or like a broad dull Lethe flowing round the walls 
of Rome, and separating it from all the world ! How 
often have the Legions, in triumphant march, gone glittering 
across that purple waste, so silent and unpeopled now ! How 
often has the train of captives looked, with sinking hearts, 
upon the distant city, and beheld its population pouring out, 
to hail the return of their conqueror ! What riot, sensuality 
and murder, have run mad in the vast palaces now heaps of 
brick and shattered marble ! What glare of fires, and roar 
of popular tumult, and wail of pestilence and famine, have 
come sweeping over the wild plain where nothing is now 
heard but the wind, and where the solitary lizards gambol 
unmolested in the sun ! 

The train of wine-carts going into Rome, each di'iven by a 
shaggy peasant reclining beneath a little gipsy-fashioned 
canojDy of sheepskin, is ended now, and we go toiling up into 
a higher country where there are trees. The next day brings 
us on the Pontine Marshes, wearily flat and lonesome, and 
overgrown with brushwood, and swamped with water, but 



FONDI. 157 



»> 



■with a fine road made across tnem, sHaded by a long, Ion 
avenue. Here and there, we pass a solitary guard-house ; 
here and there a hovel, deserted, and walled up. Some 
herdsmen loiter on the banks of the stream beside the road, 
and sometimes a flat-bottomed boat, towed by a man, comes 
rippling idly along it. A horseman passes occasionally, car- 
rying a long gun cross-wise on the saddle before him, and 
attended by fierce dogs; but there is nothing else astir 
save the wind and the shadows, until we come in sight of 
Terracina. 

How blue and bright the sea, rolling below the windows 
of the inn so famous in robber stories ! How picturesque 
the great crags and points of rock overhanging to-morrow's 
narrow road, where galley-slaves are working in the quarries 
above, and the sentinels who guard them lounge on the sea- 
shore ! All night there is the murmur of the sea beneath the 
stars; and, in the morning, just at daybreak, the prospect 
suddenly becoming expanded, as if by a miracle, reveals — in 
the far distance, across the sea there ! — Naples with its 
islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire ! Within a quarter of an 
hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in the clouds, 
and there is nothing but the sea and sky. 

The Neapolitan fi'ontier crossed, after two hours' travelling ; 
and the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with 
difficulty appeased ; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the 
fii-st Neapolitan town — Fondi. Take note of Fondi, in the 
name of all that is wretched and beggarly. 

A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the 
centre of the miserable street, fed by obscene rivulets that 
trickle from the abject houses. There is not a door, a 
window, or a shutter ; not a roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, 
in all Fondi, but is decayed, and crazy, and rotting away. 
The wretched history of the to^m, with all its sieges and pil- 
lages by Barbarossa and the rest, might have been acted last 
year. How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the miserable 
street, come to be alive, and undevoured by the people, is one 
of the enigmas of the world. 

A hollow-cheeked and scowling people they are ! All 
beggars ; but that 's nothing. Look at them as they gather 
round. Some, are too indolent to come down-stairs, or are 
too msely mistrustful of the stairs, perhaps, to venture : so 
stretch out their lean hands from upper windows, and howl 5 



158 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

others, come flocking about us, fighting and jostling one 
another, and demanding, incessantly, charity for the love of 
God, charity for tlie love of the Blessed Virgin, charity for the 
love of all the Saints. A group of miserable children, almost 
naked, screaming forth the same petition, discover that they 
can see themselves reflected in the varnish of the carriage, 
and begin to dance and make grimaces, that they may have 
the pleasure of seeing their antics repeated in this mirror. A 
crippled idiot, in the act of striking one of them who drowns 
his clamorous demand for charity, observes his angry counter- 
part in the panel, stops short, and thrusting out his tongue, 
begins to wag his head and chatter. The shrill cry raised at 
this, awakens half a dozen wild creatures wrapped in frowsy 
brown cloaks, who are lying on the church-steps with pots and 
pans for sale. These, scrambling up, approach, and beg defi- 
antly. '' I am hungry. Give me something. Listen to me, 
Signer. I am hungry ! " Then, a ghastly old woman, fear- 
ful of being too late, comes hobbling down the street, stretch- 
ing out one hand, and scratching herself all the way with the 
other, and screaming, long before she can be heard, '' Charity, 
charity ! I 'U go and pray for you directly, beautiful lady, if 
you 'U give me charity ! " Lastly, the members of a brother- 
hood for burjdng the dead : hideously masked, and attired in 
shabby black robes, white at the skirts, with the splashes of 
many muddy winters : escorted by a dirty priest, and a con- 
genial cross-bearer : come hurrying past. Surroimded by 
this motley concourse, we move out of Fondi : bad bright 
eyes glaring at us, out of the darkness of every crdzy tene- 
ment, like glistening fragments of its filth and putrefaction. 

A noble mountain-pass, with the ruins of a fort on a strong 
eminence, traditionally called the Fort of Fra Diavolo ; the 
old town of Itri, like a device in pastry, built up, almost 
perpendicularly, on a hill, and approached by long steep 
flights of steps ; beautiful Mola di Gaeta, whose wines, like 
those of Albano, have degenerated since the daj's of Horace, 
or his taste for wine was bad : which is not likely of one who 
enjoyed it so much, and extolled it so well ; another night 
upon the road at St. Agata ; a rest next day at Capua, which 
is picturesque, but hardly so seductive to a traveller now, as 
the soldiers of Prcetorian Rome were wont to find the ancient 
city of that name ; a flat road among vines festooned and 
looped from tree to tree ; and Mount Vesuvius close at hand 



NAPLES. 159 

at last ! — ^its cone and summit whitened with snow ; and its 
smoke hanging over it, in the heavy atmosphere of the day, 
like a dense cloud. So we go, rattling down hill, into 
Naples. 

A funeral is coming up the street, towards us. The body, 
on an open bier, borne on a kind of palanquin, covered with a 
gay cloth of crimson and gold. The mourners, in white 
gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well 
represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, 
and tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the com- 
mon Vetturino vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, 
decked with smart trappings and great abundance of brazen 
ornament, and always going very fast. Not that their loads 
are light ; for the smallest of them has at least six people 
inside, four in front, four or five more hanging on behind, 
and two or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, 
where they He half-suffocated with mud and dust. Exliibitors 
of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry, 
reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and 
showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing 
the wonders within, and admiring crowds assembled without, 
assist the whirl and bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in 
doorways, archways, and kennels ; the gentry, gaily dressed, 
are dashing up and down in carriages on the Chiaja, or walk- 
ing in the Public Gardens ; and quiet letter-writers, perched 
behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of 
the Great Theatre of San Carlo, in the public street, are 
waiting for clients. 

Here is a galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written 
to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting 
under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has ob- 
tained permission of the sentinel who guards him : who 
stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The 
galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he 
desires to say ; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in 
his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what 
he is told. After a time, the gaUey-slave becomes discursive 
— incoherent. The secretary pauses and rubs his chin. Th*" 
galley-slave is voluble and energetic. The secretary, at 
length, catches the idea, and with the air of a man who knows 
how to word it, sets it down ; stopping, now and then, to 
glance back at his text admiringly. The galley-slave is silent 



160 PICT ORES FROM ITALY. 

The soldier stoically cracks his nuts. Is there anything more 
to say ? inquires the letter-writer. No more. Then listen, 
friend of mine. He reads it through. The galley-slave is 
quite enchanted. It is folded, and addressed, and given to 
him, and he pays the fee. The secretary falls back indolently 
in his chair, and takes a book. The galley-slave gathers up 
an empty sack. The sentinel throws away a handful of 
nut-shells, shoidders his musket, and away they go together. 

Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their 
right hands, when you look at them ? Everything is done in 
pantomime in Naples, and that is the conventional sign for 
hunger. A man who is quarrelliDg with another, yonder, 
lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his left, and 
shakes the two thumbs — expressive of a donkey's ears — 
whereat his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people 
bargaining for fish, the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat 
pocket when he is told the price, and walks away without a 
word : having thoroughly conveyed to the seller that he con- 
siders it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting, one 
touches his lips, twice or thrice, holds up the five fingers of 
his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the 
palm. The other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has 
been invited to a friendly dinner at half-past five o'clock, and 
will certainly come. 

All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the 
wrist, with the fore-finger stretched out, expresses a negative 
— the only negative beggars will ever understand. But, in 
Naples, those five fingers are a copious language. 

All this, and every other kind of out-door life and stir, and 
maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-selling all day long, 
and begging and stealing everywhere and at all hoiu-s, you 
see upon the bright sea-shore, where the waves of the bay 
sparkle merrily. But, lovers and hunters of the picturesque, 
let us not keep too studiously out of view the miserable 
depravity, degradation, and wretchedness, with which this gay 
Neapolitan life is inseparably associated ! It is not well to 
find Saint Giles's so repulsive, and the Porta Capuana so 
attractive. A pair of naked legs and a ragged red scarf, do 
not make all the difference between what is interesting and 
what is coarse and odious ? Painting and poetising for ever, 
if you will, the beauties of this most beautifid and lovely 
ppot of earth, let us, as our duty, try to associate a new pic- 



NAPLES. 161 

fcuresque with, some faint recognition of man's destiny and 
capabilities ; more hopeful, I believe, among the ice and 
snow of the North Pole, than in the sun and bloom of 
Naples. 

Capri — once made odious by the deified beast Tiberius — - 
Ischia, Procida, and the thousand distant beauties of the 
Bay, lie in the blue sea yonder, changing in the mist and 
sunshine twenty times a-day : now close at hand, now far off, 
now unseen. The fairest country in the world, is spread about 
us. Whether we turn towards the Miseno shore of the 
splendid watery amphitheatre, and go by the Grotto of Posi- 
]ipo to the Grotto del Cane and away to Baise : or take the 
other way, towards Vesuvius and Sorrento, it is one succession 
of delights. In the last-named direction, where, over doors 
and archways, there are countless little images of San Gennaro, 
with his Canute's hand stretched out, to check the fury of the 
Burning JMountain, we are carried pleasantly, by a railroad on 
the beautiful Sea Beach, past the town of Torre del Greco, 
built upon the ashes of the former town destroyed by an 
eruption of Vesuvius, within a hundred years ; and past the 
flat-roofed houses, granaries, and maccaroni manufactories ; 
to Castel-a-Mare, with its ruined castle, now inhabited by 
fishermen, standing in the sea upon a heap of rocks. Here, 
the railroad terminates ; but, hence we may ride on, by an 
unbroken succession of enchanting bays, and beautiful scenery, 
sloping from the highest summit of Saint Angelo, the highest 
neighbouring mountain, down to the water's edge— among 
vineyards, olive trees, gardens of oranges and lemons, orchards, 
heaped-up rocks, green gorges in the hills — and by the bases 
of snow-covered heights, and through small towns with hand- 
some, dark-haired women at the doors — and pass delicious 
summer villas — to Sorrento, where the Poet Tasso drew his 
inspiration from the beauty surrounding him. Returning, we 
may climb the heights above Castel-a-Mare, and looking down 
among the boughs and leaves, see the crisp water glistening 
in the sun ; and clusters of white houses in distant Naples, 
dwindling, in the great extent of prospect, down to dice. The 
coming back to the city, by the beach again, at sunset : with 
the glowing sea on one side, iind the darkening mountain, 
with its smoke and flame, upon the other : is a sublime con- 
clusion to the glory of the day. 

That church by the Porta Capuana — near the old fisher- 



162 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

market in tlie dirtiest quarter of dirty Naples, where the 
revolt of Massaniello began — is memorable for having been 
the scene of one of his earliest proclamations to the people, 
and is particularly remarkable for nothing else, unless it be 
its waxen and bejewelled Saint in a glass case, with two odd 
hands ; or the enormous number of beggars who are con- 
stantly rapping their chins there, like a battery of castanets. 
The cathedral with the beautiful door, and the columns of 
African and Egyptian granite that once ornamented the temple 
of Apollo, contains the famous sacred blood of San Gennaro or 
Januarius : which is preserved in two phials in a silver taber- 
nacle, and miraculously liquefies three times a-year, to the 
great admiration of the people. At the same moment, the 
stone (distant some miles) where the Saint suffered martyrdom, 
becomes faintly red. It is said that the officiating priests 
turn faintly red also, sometimes, when these miracles occur. 

The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these 
ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem 
waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a 
curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official 
attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, 
with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death — as uncon- 
cerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying- 
places for tliree hundred years ; and, in one part, is a large 
pit full of skulls and bones, said to be the sad remains of a 
great mortality occasioned by a plague. In the rest, there is 
nothing but dust. They consist, chiefly, of great wide cor- 
ridors and labyrinths, hewn out of the rock. At the end of 
some of these long passages, are unexpected glimpses of the 
daylight, shining down from above. It looks as ghastly and 
as strange : among the torches, and the dust, and the dark 
vaults: as if it, too, were dead and buried. 

The present burial-place lies out yonder, on a hill between 
the city and Vesuvius. The old Campo Santo Mdth its 
three hundred and sixty-five pits, is only used for those who 
die in hospitals, and prisons, and are unclaimed by their 
friends. The graceful new cemetery, at no great distance 
from it, tliough yet unfinished, has already many graves 
among its shrubs and flowers, and airy colonnades. It might 
be reasonably objected elsewhere, that some of the tombs are 
meretricious and too fanciful; but the general brightness 
seems to justify it here; and Mount Vesuvius, separated 



POMPEII. 163 

from them by a lovely slope of ground, exalts and saddens 
the scene. 

If it be solemn to behold from this new City of the Dead, 
with its dark smoke hanging in the clear sky, how much more 
awful and impressive is it, viewed from the ghostly ruins of 
Herculaneum and Pompeii ! 

Stand at the bottom of the great market-place of Pompeii, 
and look up the silent streets, through the ruined temples of 
Jupiter and Isis, over the broken houses with their inmost 
sanctuaries open to the day, away to Mount Vesuvius, bright 
and snowy in the peaceful distance ; and lose all count of 
time, and heed of other things, in the strange and melancholy 
sensation of seeing the Destroyed and the Destroyer making 
this quiet picture in the sun. Then, ramble on, and see, at 
every turn, the little familiar tokens of human habitation and 
every-day pursuits; the chafing of the bucket-rope in the 
stone rim of the exhausted well ; the track of carriage-wheels 
in the pavement of the street ; the marks of drinking- vessels 
on the stone counter of the wineshop ; the amphorae in pri- 
vate cellars, stored away so many hundred years ago, and 
imdisturbed to this hour — all rendering the solitude and 
deadly lonesomeness of the place, ten thousand times more 
solemn, than if the volcano, in its fury, had swept the city 
from the earth, and sunk it in the bottom of the sea. 

After it was shaken by the earthquake which preceded the 
eruption, workmen were employed in shaping out, in stone, 
new ornaments for temples and other buildings • that had 
suffered. Here lies their work, outside the city gate, as if 
they would return to-morrow. 

In the cellar of Diomede's house, where certain skeletons 
were found huddled together, close to the door, the impression 
of their bodies on the ashes, hardened with the ashes, and 
became stamped and fixed there, after they had shrunk, inside, 
to scanty bones. So, in the theatre of Herculaneum, a comic 
mask, floating on the stream when it was hot and liquid, 
stamped its mimic features in it as it hardened into stone ; 
and now, it turns upon the stranger the fantastic look it 
turned upon the audiences in that same theatre two thousand 
years ago. 

Next to the wonder of going up and down the streets, and 
in and out of the houses, and traversing the secret chambers 
of the temples of a religion that has vanished from the earth, 

u 2 



164 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and finding so many fresh, traces of remote antiquity : as if 
the course of Time had been stopped after this desolation, and 
there had been no nights and days, months, years, and cen- 
turies, since : nothing is more impressive and terrible than 
the many evidences of the searching nature of the ashes, as 
bespeaking their irresistible power, and the impossibility of 
escaping them. In the wine-cellars, they forced their way 
into the earthen vessels : displacing the wine and choking 
them, to the brim, with dust. In the tombs, they forced the 
ashes of the dead from the funeral urns, and rained new ruin 
even into them. The mouths, and eyes, and skulls of all the 
skeletons, were stuffed with this terrible hail. In Herculaneum, 
where the flood was of a different and a heavier kind, it 
rolled in, like a sea. Imagine a deluge of water turned to 
marble, at its height — and that is what is called ''the 
lava" here. 

Some workmen were digging the gloomy well on the brink 
of ^vhich we now stand, lookiug down, when they came on 
some of the stone benches of the theatre — those steps (for 
such they seem) at the bottom of the excavation — and found 
the buried city of Herculaneum. Presently going down, with 
lighted torches, we are perplexed by great walls of monstrous 
thickness, rising up between the benches, shutting out the 
stage, obtruding their shapeless forms in absurd places, con- 
fusing the whole plan, and making it a disordered dream. 
We cannot, at first, believe, or picture to ourselves, that 
This came rolling in, and drowned the city ; and that all 
that is not here, has been cut away, by the axe, like solid 
stone. But this perceived and understood, the horror and 
oppression of its presence are indescribable. 

Many of the paintings on the walls in the roofless chambers 
of both cities, or carefully removed to the museum at Naples, 
are as fresh and plain, as if they had been executed yesterday. 
Here are subjects of still life, as provisions, dead game, 
bottles, glasses, and the like; familiar classical stories, or 
mythological fables, alwaj^s forcibly and plainly told ; conceits 
of cupids, quarrelling, sporting, working at trades ; theatrical 
rehearsals ; poets reading their productions to their friends ; 
inscriptions chalked upon the walls ; political squibs, adver- 
tisements, rough drawings by sclioolboys ; everythiug to 
people and restore the ancient cities, in the fancy of their 
wondering visitor. I'ui'uiture, too, you see, of every kind— 



PJESTUM. 165 

lamps, tables, couclies ; vessels for eating, drinking', and 
cooking ; workmen's tools, surgical instruments, tickets for 
the theatre, pieces of money, personal ornaments, bunches of 
keys found clenched in the grasp of skeletons, helmets of 
guards and warriors; little household bells, yet musical with 
their old domestic tones. 

The least among these objects, lends its aid to swell the 
interest of Vesuvius, and invest it with a perfect fascination. 
The looking, from either ruined city, into the neighbouring 
grounds overgrown with beautiful vines and luxuriant trees ; 
and remembering that house upon house, temple on temple, 
building after building, and street after street, are still lying 
underneath the roots of all the quiet cultivation, waiting to be 
turned up to the light of day ; is something so wonderful, so 
full of mj^stery, so captivating to the imagination, that one 
would think it would be paramount, and jdeld to nothing else. 
To nothing but Vesuvius ; but the mountain is the genius of 
the scene. From every indication of the ruin it has worked, 
we look, again, with an absorbing interest to where its smoke 
is rising up into the sky. It is beyond us, as we thread the 
ruined streets : above us, as we stand upon the ruined walls ; 
we follow it through every vista of broken columns, as we 
wander through the empty courtyards of the houses ; and 
through the garlandings and interlacings of every wanton 
vine. Turning away to Pa^stum yonder, to see the awful 
structures built, the least aged of them, hundreds of years 
before the birth of Christ, and standing yet, erect in lonely 
majesty, upon the wild, malaria -blighted plain — we watch 
Vesuvius as it disappears from the prospect, and watch for it 
again, on our return, with the same thrill of interest : as the 
doom and destiny of all this beautiful country, biding its 
terrible time. 

It is very warm in the sun, on this early spring- day, when 
we return from Psestum, but very cold in the shade : insomuch, 
that although we may lunch, pleasantly, at noon, in the open 
air, by the gate of Pompeii, the neighbouring rivulet supplies 
thick ice for our wine. But, the sun is shining brightly ; 
there is not a cloud or speck of vapour in the whole blue sky, 
looking down upon the bay of Naples ; and the moon will be 
at the full to-night. No matter that the snow and ice lie 
thick upon the summit of Vesuvius, or that we have been 
on foot all day at Pompeii, or that croakers maintain that 



166 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

strangers sliould not be on the mountain by night, in surh 
an unusual season. Let us take advantage of the fine 
weather; make the best of our way to Resina, the little 
village at the foot of the mountain; prepare ourselves, as 
well as we can, on so short a notice, at the guide's house ; 
ascend at once, and have sunset half-way up, moonlight at 
the top, and midnight to come down in ! 

At four o'clock in the afternoon, there is a terrible uproar 
in the little stable-yard of Signior Salvatore, the recognised 
head-guide, with the gold band round his cap ; and thirty 
under-guides who are all scuffling and screaming at once, are 
preparing half a dozen saddled ponies, three litters, and some 
stout staves, for the journey. Every one of the thirty, quarrels 
with the other twenty-nine, and fi^ightens the six ponies ; and 
as much of the village as can possibly squeeze itself into the 
little stable-yard, participates in the tumult, and gets trodden 
on by the cattle. 

After much violent skirmishing, and more noise than would 
suffice for the storming of Naples, the procession starts. The 
head-guide, who is liberally paid for all the attendants, rides 
a little in advance of the party; the other thirty guides 
proceed on foot. Eight go forward with the litters that are 
to be used by-and-by ; and the remaining two-and-twenty beg. 

We ascend, gradually, by stony lanes like rough broad 
flights of stairs, for some time. At length, we leave these, 
and the vineyards on either side of them, and emerge upon a 
bleak bare region where the lava lies confusedly, in enormous 
rusty masses : as if the earth had been ploughed up by 
burning thunderbolts. And now, we halt to see the siui set. 
The change that falls upon the dreary region, and on the 
whole mountain, as its red light fades, and the night comes 
on — and the unutterable solemnity and dreariness that reign 
around, who that has witnessed it, can ever forget ! 

It is dark, when after winding, for some time, over the 
broken ground, we arrive at the foot of the cone : which is 
extremely steep, and seems to rise, almost perpendicularly, 
from the spot where we dismount. The only liglit is reflected 
fi-om the snow, deep, hard, and white, with 'v\'hich the cone is 
covered. It is now intensely cold, and the air is piercing. The 
thirty-one have brought no torches, knowing that the moon will 
rise before we reach the top. Two of the litters are devoted 
to the two ladies; the third, to a rather heav^' gentleman 



VESUVIUS. 167 

from Naples, whose hospitality and good-natiire have attached 
him to the expedition, and determined him to assist in doing 
the honours of the mountain. The rather heavy gentleman 
is carried by fifteen men ; each of the ladies by half a dozen. 
We who walk, make the best use of our staves ; and so the 
whole party begin to labour upward over the snow, — as if 
they were toiling to the summit of an antediluvian TweKth- 
cake. 

We are a long time toiling up ; and the head-guide looks 
oddly about him when one of the company — not an Italian, 
though an habitue of the mountain for many years : whom 
we will call, for our present purpose, Mr. Pickle of Portici — - 
suggests that, as it is freezing hard, and the usual footing of 
ashes is covered by the snow and ice, it will surely be difficult 
to descend. But the sight of the litters above, tilting up and 
down, and jerking from this side to that, as the bearers con- 
tinually slip and stumble, diverts our attention : more especially 
as the whole length of the rather heavy gentleman is, at that 
moment, presented to us alarmingly foreshortened, with his 
head downwards. 

The rising of the moon soon afterwards, revives the flagging 
spirits of the bearers. Stimulating each other with their 
usual watchword, '' Courage, friend ! It is to eat maccaroni ! " 
they press on, gallantly, for the summit. 

From tinging the top of the snow above us, with a band of 
light, and pouring it in a stream through the valley below, 
while we have been ascending in the dark, the moon soon 
lights the whole white mountain side, and the broad sea down 
below, and tiny Naples in the distance, and every village in 
the country round. The whole prospect is in this lovely state, 
when we come upon the platform on the mountain-top — 
the region of Fire — an exhausted crater formed of great 
masses of gigantic cinders, like blocks of stone from some 
tremendous waterfall, burnt up ; from every chink and crevice 
of which, hot, sulphurous smoke is pouring out : while, from 
another conical-shaped hill, the present crater, rising abruptly 
from this platform at the end, great sheets of fire are streaming 
forth : reddening the night with flame, blackening it with 
smoke, and spotting it with red-hot stones and cinders, that 
fly up into the air like feathers, and fall down like lead. 
What words can paint the gloom and grandeur of this 
scene! 



1G8 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

The broken ground ; the smoke ; the sense of suffocation 
from the sulphur ; the fear of falling down through the 
crevices in the j'awuing ground ; the stopping, every now and 
then, for somebody who is missing in the dark (for the dense 
smoke now obscures the moon) ; the intolerable noise of the 
thirty ; and the hoarse roaring of the mountain ; make it a 
scene of such confusion, at the same time, that we reel again. 
But, dragging the ladies through it, and across another ex- 
hausted crater to the foot of the present Volcano, we approach 
close to it on the windy side, and then sit down among the 
liot ashes at its foot, and look up in silence ; faintly estimating 
the action that is going on within, from its being full a 
hundred feet higher, at this minute, than it was six weeks 
ago. 

There is something in the fire and roar, that generates an 
irresistible desire to get nearer to it. We cannot rest long, 
without starting off, two of us, on our hands and knees, 
accompanied by the head-guide, to climb to the brim of the 
flaming crater, and try to look in. Meanwhile, the thirty yell, 
as with one voice, that it is a dangerous proceeding, and call 
to us to come back ; frightening the rest of the party out of 
their wits. 

What ^dth their noise, and what with the trembling of the 
thin crust of ground, that seems about to open underneath our 
feet and plunge us in the burning gulf below (which is the 
real danger, if there be any) ; and what with the flashing of 
the fire in our faces, and the shower of red-hot ashes that is 
raining down, and the choking smoke and sulphur ; we may 
well feel giddy and ii-rational, like drunken men. But, we 
contrive to climb up to the brim, and look down, for a moment, 
into the Hell of boiling fire below. Then, we all three come 
rolling down; blackened, and singed, and scorched, and hot, 
and giddy : and each with his dress alight in half a dozen 
places. 

You have read, a thousand times, that the usual way of 
descending, is, by sliding down the ashes : which, forming a 
gradually increasing ledge below the feet, prevent too rapid a 
descent. But, when we have crossed the two exhausted craters 
on our way back, and are come to this precipitous place, there 
is (as ISIr. Pickle has foretold) no vestige of ashes to be seen ; 
the whole being a smooth sheet of ice. 

In this dilemma, ten or a dozen of the guides cautiously join 



VESUVIUS, 169 

hands, and make a cliain of men ; of wliom the foremost beat, 
as Tvell as they can, a rough track with their sticks, down 
which we prex)are to follow. The way being fearfully steep, 
and none of the party : even of the thirty : being able to keep 
their feet for six paces together, the ladies are taken out of 
their litters, and placed, each between two careful persons ; 
while others of the thirty hold by their skirts, to prevent their 
falling forward — a necessary precaution, tending to the imme- 
diate and hopeless dilapidation of tlieu* apparel. The rather 
hea\y gentleman is adjiu-ed to leave his litter too, and be 
escorted in a similar manner ; but he resolves to be brought 
down as he was brought up, on the principle that his fifteen 
bearers are not likely to tumble all at once, and that he is safer 
so, than trusting to his own legs. 

In this order, we begin the descent : sometimes on foot, 
sometimes shuflling on the ice : always proceeding much more 
quietly and slowty, than on our upward way : and constantly 
alarmed by the falling among us of somebody from behind, 
who endangers the footing of the whole party, and clings per- 
tinaciously to anybody's ankles. It is impossible for the litter 
to be in advance, too, as the track has to be made ; and its 
appearance beliind us, overhead — -with some one or other of 
the bearers always down, and the rather heavy gentleman with 
his legs always in the air — is very threatening and frightful. 
We have gone on thus, a very little way, painfully and 
anxiously, but quite merrily, and regarding it as a great 
success — and have all fallen several times, and have all been 
stopped, somehow or other, as we were sliding away — when 
Mr. Pickle, of Portici, in the act of remarking on these 
rmcommon circumstances as quite beyond his experience, 
stumbles, falls, disengages himself, with quick presence of 
mind, from those about him, plunges away head foremost, and 
rolls, over and over, down the whole surface of the cone ! 

Sickening as it is to look, and be so powerless to help him, 
I see him there, in the moonlight — I have had such a dream 
often — skimming over the white ice, like a cannon-ball. 
Almost at the same moment, there is a cry from behind ; and 
a man who has carried a light basket of spare cloaks on his 
head, comes rolling past, at the same frightful speed, closely 
followed by a boy. At this climax of the chapter of accidents, 
the remaining eight-and-twenty vociferate to that degree, that 
a pack of wolves woiild be music to them ! 



170 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

Giddy, and bloody, and a mere bundle of rags, is Pickle of 
Portici when we reach the place where we dismounted, and 
where the horses are waiting ; but, thank God, sound in limb ! 
And never are we likely to be more glad to see a man alive 
and on his feet, than to see him now — making light of it too, 
though sorely bruised and in great pain. The boy is brought 
into the Hermitage on the Mountain, while we are at supper, 
with liis head tied up ; and the man is heard of, some hours 
afterwards. He too is bruised and stunned, but has broken no 
bones ; the snow having, fortunately, covered all the larger 
blocks of rock and stone, and rendered them harmless. 

After a cheerful meal, and a good rest before a blazing fire, 
we again take horse, and continue our descent to Salvatore's 
house — very slowly, by reason of our bruised friend being 
hardly able to keep the saddle, or endure the pain of motion. 
Though it is so late at night, or early in the morning, all the 
people of the village are waiting about the little stable-yard 
when we arrive, and looking up the road by which we are 
expected. Our appearance is hailed with a great clamour of 
tongues, and a general sensation for which in our modesty we 
are somewhat at a loss to account, until, turning into the yard, 
we find that one of a party of French gentlemen who were on 
the mountain at the same time is Ipng on some straw in the 
stable, with a broken limb : looking like Death, and suffering 
great tortui*e ; and that we were confidently supposed to have 
encountered some worse accident. 

So ''well returned, and Heaven be praised!" as the cheerful 
Vetturino, who has borne us company all the way fi'om Pisa, 
says, with all his heart ! And away with his ready horses, 
into sleeping Naples ! 

It wakes again to Policinelli and pickpockets, buffo singers 
and beggars, rags, puppets, flowers, brightness, dirt, and 
universal degradation ; airing its Harlequin suit in the sun- 
shine, next day and every day; singing, starving, dancing, 
gaming, on the sea-shore ; and leaving all labour to the 
burning mountain, which is ever at its work. 

Our English dilettanti would be very pathetic on the subject 
of the national taste, if they could hear an Italian opera half 
as badly sung in England as we may hear the Foscari per- 
formed, to-night, in the splendid tlieatre of San Carlo. But, 
for astonishing truth and spirit in seizing and embodying the 
real life about it, the shabby little San Cai-Hno Theatre — the 



NAPLES. 1 71 

rickety house one story high, with a staring picture outside : 
down among- the drums and trumpets, and the tumblers, and 
the lady conjuror — is without a rival anywhere. 

There is one extraordinary feature in the real life of 
Naples, at which we may take a glance before we go — the 
Lotteries. 

They prevail in most parts of Italy, but are particularly 
obvious, in their effects and influences, here. They are di'awn 
every Saturday. They bring an immense revenue to the 
Government; and diffuse a taste for gambhng among the 
poorest of the poor, which is very comfortable to the coffers of 
the state, and very ruinous to themselves. The lowest stake is 
one grain; less than a farthing. One hundred numbers — 
from one to a hundred, inclusive — are put into a box. Five 
are drawn. Those are the prizes. I buy three numbers. If 
one of them come up, I win a small prize. If two, some 
hundreds of times my stake. If three, three thousand five 
hundred times my stake. I stake (or play as they call it) what 
I can upon my numbers, and buy what numbers I please. The 
amount I play, I pay at the lottery office, where I purchase the 
ticket ; and it is stated on the ticket itself. 

Every lottery office keeps a printed book, an Universal 
Lottery Diviner, where every possible accident and circumstance 
is provided for, and has a number against it. For instance, 
let us stake two carlini — about sevenpence. On our way to 
the lottery office, we run against a black man. AVhen we get 
there, we say gravely, " The Diviner." It is handed over the 
counter, as a serious matter of business. We look at black 
man. Such a number. " Give us that." We look at 
running against a person in tlie street. " Give us that." We 
look at the name of the street itself. " Give us that." Now, 
we have our three numbers. 

If the roof of the theatre of San Carlo were to fall in, so 
many people would play upon the numbers attached to such an 
accident in the Diviner, that the Government would soon close 
those numbers, and decline to run the risk of losing any more 
upon them. This often happens. Not long ago, when there 
was a fire in the King's Palace, there was such a desperate run 
on fire, and king, and palace, that further stakes on the 
numbers attached to those words in the Golden Book were 
forbidden. Every accident or event, is supposed, by the 
ignorant populace, to be a revelation to the beholder, or party 



172 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

concerned, in connection with, the lottery. Certain people who 
have a talent for dreaming fortunately, are much sought after; 
and there are some priests who are constantly favored with 
visions of the lucky numbers. 

I heard of a horse running away with a man, and dashing 
him down, dead, at the corner of a street. Pursuing the 
horse with incredible speed, was another man, who ran so 
fast, that he came up, immediately after the accident. He 
threw himself upon his knees beside the unfortunate rider, 
and clasped his hand with an expression of the wildest grief. 
*' If you have life," he said, " speak one word to me ! If you 
have one gasp of breath left, mention jouv age for Heaven's 
sake, that I may play that number in the lottery." 

It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and we may go to see our 
lottery drawn. The ceremony takes place every Saturday, in 
the Tribunale, or Court of Justice — this singular, earthy- 
smelling room, or gallery, as mouldy as an old cellar, and as 
damp as a dungeon. At the upper end is a platform, with a 
large horse- shoe table upon it ; and a President and Council 
sitting round — all Judges of the Law. The man on the little 
stool behind the President, is the Capo Lazzarone, a kind of 
tribune of the people, appointed on their behalf to see that all 
is fairly conducted : attended by a few personal friends. A 
ragged, swarthy fellow he is : with long matted hair hanging 
down all over his face : and covered, from head to foot, Avith 
most unquestionably genuine dirt. All the body of the room 
is filled with the commonest of the Neapolitan people : and 
between them and the platform, guarding the steps leading to 
the latter, is a small body of soldiers. 

There is some delay in the arrival of the necessary number 
of judges ; during which, the box, in which the numbers are 
being placed, is a soui'ce of the deepest interest. When the 
box is full, the boy who is to draw the numbers out of it 
becomes the prominent feature of the proceedings. He is 
already dressed for his part, in a tight brown Holland coat, 
with only one (the left) sleeve to it, which leaves his right 
arm bared to the shoulder, ready for plunging down into the 
mysterious chest. 

During the hush and whisper that pervade the room, all 
eyes are turned on this young minister of fortune. People 
begin to inquire his age, with a view to the next lottery ; aud 
the number of his brothers and sisters ; and the age of his 



NAPLES. 173 

fatlier and mother ; and whether he has any moles or pimples 
upon him ; and where, and how many ; when the arrival of 
the last judge but one (a little old man, universally dreaded 
as possessing the Evil Eye) makes a slight diversion, and 
would occasion a greater one, but that he is immediately 
deposed, as a source of interest, by the officiating priest, who 
advances gravely to his place, followed by a very dirty little 
boy, carrying his sacred vestments, and a pot of Holy Water. 

Here is the last judge come at last, and now he takes his 
place at the horse-shoe table ! 

There is a murmur of irrepressible agitation. In the midst 
of it, the priest puts his head into the sacred vestments, and 
pulls the same over his shoulders. Then he says a silent 
prayer; and dipping a brush into the pot of Holy Water, 
sprinkles it over the box and over the boy, and gives them a 
double-barrelled blessing, which the box and the boy are both 
hoisted on the table to receive. The boy remaining on the 
table, the box is now carried round the front of the platform, 
by an attendant, who holds it up and shakes it lustily all the 
time; seeming to say, like the conjurer, " There is no decep- 
tion, ladies and gentlemen ; keep your eyes upon me, if you 
please ! " 

At last, the box is set before the boy ; and the boy, first 
holding up his naked arm and open hand, dives down into 
the hole (it is made like a ballot-box) and pulls out a number, 
which is rolled up, round something hard, like a bonbon. 
This he hands to the judge next him, who unrolls a little bit, 
and hands it to the President, next to whom he sits. The 
President unrolls it, very slowly. The Capo Lazzarone leans 
over his shoulder. The President holds it up, unrolled, to 
the Capo Lazzarone. The Capo Lazzarone, looking at it 
eagerly, cries out, in a slirill loud voice, " Sessanta-due ! " 
(sixty-two), expressing ih.Q two upon his fingers, as he calls it 
out. Alas ! the Capo Lazzarone himself has not staked on 
sixty-two. His face is very long, and his eyes roll wildly. 

As it happens to be a favorite number, however, it is pretty 
well received, which is not always the case. They are all 
drawn with the same ceremony, omitting the blessing. One 
blessing is enough for the whole multiplication-table. The 
only new incident in the proceedings, is the gradually deepen- 
ing intensity of the change in the Capo Lazzarone, who has, 
evidently, speculated to the very utmost extent of his means; 



174 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and Tvlio, when he sees the last number, and finds that it is 
not one of his, clasps his hands, and raises his eyes to the 
ceiling- before proclaiming it, as though remonstrating, in a 
secret agon}'-, with his patron saint, for having committed so 
gross a breach of confidence. I hope the Capo Lazzarone 
may not desert him for some other member of the Calendar, 
but he seems to threaten it. 

Where the winners may be, nobody knows. They certainly 
are not present ; the general disappointment filling one with 
pity for the poor people. They look : when we stand aside, 
observing them, in their passage through the court yard down 
below : as miserable as the prisoners in the gaol (it forms a 
part of the building), who are peeping down upon them, from 
between their bars ; or, as the fragments of human heads 
which are still dangling in chains outside, in memory of the 
good old times, when their owners were strung up there, for 
the popular edification. 

Away from Naples in a glorious sunrise, by the road to 
Capua, and then on a three days' journey along bye-roads, 
that we may see, on the way, the monastery of Monte Cassino, 
which is perched on the steep and lofty hill above the little 
town of San Germano, and is lost on a misty morning in the 
clouds. 

So much the better, for the deep sounding of its bell, which, 
as we go winding up, on mules, towards the convent, is heard 
mysteriously in the still air, while nothing is seen but the 
grey mist, moving solemnly and slowly, like a funeral pro- 
cession. Behold, at length the shadowy pile of building close 
before us : its grey walls and towers dimly seen, though so 
near and so vast : and the raw vapour rolling through its 
cloisters heavily. 

There are two black shadows walking to and fro in the 
quadrangle, near the statues of the Patron Saint and his 
sister ; and hopping on behind them, in and out of the old 
arches, is a raven, croaking in answer to the bell, and uttering, 
at intervals, the purest Tuscan. How like a Jesuit he looks ! 
There never was a sly and stealthy fellow so at home as is this 
raven, standing now at the refectory door, with his head on 
one side, and pretending to glance another way, while he is 
scrutinizing the visitors keenly, and listening with fixed atten- 
tion. What a duU-headed monk the porter becomes in com- 
pariBoal 



MONTE CASSINO. 175 

" He speaks like iis ! " says tlie porter : *' quite as plainly.'* 
Quite as plainly, Porter. Nothing could be more expressive 
than his reception of the peasants Tvho are entering the gate 
with, baskets and burdens. There is a roll in his eye, and a 
chuckle in his throat, which should qualify him to be chosen 
Superior of an Order of Ravens. He knows all about it. 
** It 's all risfht," be savs. " We know what we know. Come 
along, good people. Glad to see you ! " 

How was this extraordinary structure ever built in such, a 
situation, where the labour of conveying the stone, and iron, 
and marble, so great a height must have been prodigious ? 
'• Caw ! " says the raven, welcoming the peasants. How, 
being despoiled by plunder, fire and earthquake, has it risen 
from its ruins, and been again m.ade what we now see it, 
with its church so sumptuous and magnificent ? '' Caw ! " 
says the raven, welcoming the peasants. These people have 
a miserable appearance, and (as usual) are densely ignorant, 
and all beg, while tbe monks are chaunting in the chapel. 
'* Caw ! " says the raven, " Cuckoo ! " 

So we leave him, chuckling and rolling his eye at the con- 
vent gate, and wind slowly down again through the cloud. 
At last emerging from it, we come in sight of the village far 
below, and the flat green country intersected by rivulets; 
which is pleasant and fresh to see after the obscurity and 
haze of the convent — ^no disrespect to the raven, or the holy 
friars. 

Away we go again, by muddy roads, and through the most 
shattered and tattered of villages, where there is not a whole 
window among all the houses, or a whole garment among all 
the peasants, or the least appearance of anything to eat, in 
any of the wretched hucksters' shops. The women wear a 
bright red bodice laced before and behind, a white skirt, and 
the Neapolitan head-dress of square folds of linen, primitively 
meant to carry loads on. The men and children wear any- 
thing they can got. The soldiers are as dirty and rapacious 
as the dogs. The inns are such hobgoblin places, that they 
are infinitely more attractive and amusing than the best hotels 
in Paris. Here is one near Valmontone (that is Valmontone, 
the round, walled town on the mount opposite), which is 
appioached by a quagmire almost knee-deep. There is a 
wild colonnade below, and a dark yard full of empty stables 
and lofts, and a great long kitchen with a great long bench 



176 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

and a great long form, where a party of travellers, with two 
priests among tliem, are crowding round the fire while their 
Bupper is cooking. Above stairs, is a rough brick gallery to 
sit in, with very little windows with very small patches of 
loiotty glass in them, and all the doors that open from it (a 
dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board on tressels 
for a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, and a 
fire-place large enough in itself for a breakfast parlor, where, 
as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest 
and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed 
chimney-sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring 
country lamp on the table ; and, hovering about it, scratching 
her thick black hair continuallj'-, a yellow dwarf of a woman, 
who stands on tiptoe to arrange the hatchet knives, and takes 
a flying leap to look into the water-jug. The beds in the 
adjoining rooms are of the liveliest kind. There is not a 
solitary scrap of looking-glass in the house, and the washing 
apparatus is identical with the cooking utensils. But the 
yellow dwarf sets on the table a good flask of excellent wine, 
holding a quart at least ; and produces, among half-a-dozen 
other dishes, two-thirds of a roasted kid, emoking hot. She 
is as good-humoured, too, as dirty, which is saying a great 
deal. So here 's long life to her, in the flask of wine, and 
prosperity to the establishment. 

Kome gained and left behind, and with it the Pilgrims who 
are now repairing to their own homes again — each with his 
scallop shell and staff, and soliciting alms for the love of God 
— we come, by a fair country, to the Falls of Terni, where 
the whole Velino river dashes, headlong, from a rocky height, 
amidst shining spray and rainbows. Perugia, strongly 
fortified by art and nature, on a lofty eminence, rising abruptly 
from the plain where purple mountains mingle with the 
distant sky, is glowing, on its market day, with radiant 
colours. They set off its sombre but rich Gothic buildings 
admirably. The pavement of its market-place is strewn with 
country goods. All along the steep hill leading from the 
town, under the town wall, there is a noisy fair of calves, 
lambs, pigs, horses, mules, and oxen. Fowls, geese, and 
turkeys, flutter vigorously among their very hoofs ; and 
buyers, sellers, and spectators, clustering everpvhere, block 
up the road as we come shouting down upon them. 

Suddenly, there is a ringing sound among our horses. The 



FLORENCE. 177 

driver stops them. Sinking in his saddle, and easting up his 
eyes to Heaven, he delivers this apostrophe, *' Oh Jove 
Omnipotent ! here is a horse has lost his shoe ! " 

Notwithstanding the tremendous nature of this accident, 
and the utterly forlorn look and gesture (impossible in any 
one hut an Italian Vetturino) with which it is announced, it 
is not long in being repaired by a mortal Farrier, by whose 
assistance we reach Castiglione the same night, and Arezzo 
next day. Mass is, of course, performing in its fine cathedral, 
where the sun shines in among the clustered pillars, through 
rich stained-glass windows : half revealing, half conceaHng 
the kneeling figures on the pavement, and striking out paths 
of spotted light in the long aisles. 

But, how much beauty of another kind is here, when, on a 
fair clear morning, we look, from the summit of a hill, on 
Florence ! See where it lies before us in a sun-lighted valley, 
bright with the winding Arno, and shut in by swelling hills ; 
its domes, and towers, and palaces, rising from, the rich 
country in a glittering heap, and shining in the sun like gold ! 

Magnificently stern and sombre are the streets of beautiful 
Florence ; and the strong old piles of building make such 
heaps of shadow,. on the ground and in the river, that there 
is another and a different city of rich forms and fancies, 
always lying at our feet. Prodigious palaces, constructed for 
defence, with small distrustful windows heavily barred, and 
walls of great thickness formed of huge masses of rough 
stone, frown, in their old sulky state, on every street. In the 
midst of the city — in the Piazza of the Grand Duke, adorned 
with beautiful statues and the Fountain of Neptune — rises the 
Palazzo Vecchio, with its enormous overhanging battlements, 
and the Great Tower that watches over the whole town. In 
its court-yard — worthy of the Castle of Otranto in its ponderous 
gloom. — is a massive staircase that the heaviest waggon and 
the stoutest team of horses might be driven up. Within it, 
is a Great Saloon, faded and tarnished in its stately decorations, 
and mouldering by grains, but recording yet, in pictures on 
its walls, the triumphs of the Medici and the wars of the old 
Florentine people. The prison is hard by, in an adjacent 
court-yard of the building — a foul and dismal place, where 
some men are shut up close, in small cells like ovens ; and 
where others look through bars and beg; where some are 
playing draughts, and some are talking to their friends, who 



178 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

smoke, the while, to piirify the air ; and some are buying 
wine and fruit of women-vendors ; and all are squalid, dirty, 
and vile to look at. '^ They are merry enough, Signore," says 
the Jailer. " They are all blood-stained here," he adds, 
indicating, with his hand, three-fourths of the whole building. 
Before the hour is out, an old man, eighty years of age, 
quarrelling over a bargain with a young girl of seventeen, 
stabs her dead, in the market-place full of bright flowers; 
and is brought in prisoner, to swell the number. 

Among the four old bridges that span the river, the Ponte 
Vecchio — that bridge which is covered with the shops of 
Jewellers and Goldsmiths — is a most enchanting feature in 
the scene. The space of one house, in the centre, being left 
open, the view beyond, is shown as in a frame ; and that 
precious glimpse of sky, and water, and rich buildings, 
shining so quietly among the huddled roofs and gables on the 
bridge, is exquisite. Above it, the Gallery of the Grand 
Duke crosses the river. It was built to connect the two Great 
Palaces by a secret passage ; and it takes its jealous course 
among the streets and houses, with true despotism : going 
where it lists, and spurning every obstacle away, before it. 

The Grand Duke has a worthier secret passage tlirough the 
streets, in his black robe and hood, as a member of the 
Compagnia della Misericordia, which brotherhood includes all 
ranks of men. If an accident take place, their o£B.ce is, to 
raise the sufferer, and bear him tenderly to the Hospital. If 
a fire break out, it is one of their functions to repair to the 
spot, and render their assistance and protection. It is, also, 
among their commonest offices, to attend and console the sick ; 
and they neither receive money, nor eat, nor drink, in any 
house they visit for this purpose. Those who are on duty for 
the time, are called together, on a moment's notice, by the 
tolling of the great bell of the Tower ; and it is said that the 
Grand Duke has been seen, at this sound, to rise from his seat 
at table, and quietly withdraw to attend the summons. 

In this other large Piazza, where an irregular kind of 
market is held, and stores of old iron and other small merchan- 
dise are set out on stalls, or scattered on the pavement, are 
grouped together, the Cathedral with its great Dome, the 
beautiful Italian Gothic Tower the Campanile, and the 
Baptistry with its wrought bronze doors. And here, a small 
untrodden square in the pavement, is *'the Stone of Dante," 



FLORENCE. 179 

^wliere (so runs tlie story) lie was used to bring his stool, and 
sit in contemplation. I -wonder was he ever, in his bitter 
exile, withheld from cursing the very stones in the streets of 
Florence the ungrateful, by any kind remembrance of this old 
musing-place, and its association with gentle thoughts of little 
Beatrice ! 

The chapel of the Medici, the Good and Bad Angels, of 
Florence ; the church of Santa Croce where Michael Angelo 
lies buried, and where every stone in the cloisters is eloquent 
on great men's deaths; innumerable churches, often masses 
of imfinished heavy brickwork externally, but solemn and 
serene within ; arrest our lingering steps, in strolling through 
the city. 

In keeping with the tombs among the cloisters, is the 
Museum of Natural History, famous through the world for its 
preparations in wax ; beginning with models of leaves, seeds, 
plants, inferior animals ; and gradually ascending, through 
separate organs of the human frame, up to the whole structure of 
that wonderful creation, exquisitely presented, as in recent death. 
Few admonitions of our frail mortality can be more solemn 
and more sad, or strike so home upon the heart, as the 
counterfeits of Youth and Beauty that are lying there, upon 
their beds, in their last sleep. 

Beyond the waUs, the whole sweet Valley of the Arno, the 
convent at Fiesole, the Tower of Galileo, Boccaccio's house, 
old villas and retreats; innumerable spots of interest, aH 
glowing in a landscape of surpassing beauty steeped in the 
richest light ; are spread before us. Returning from so much 
brightness, how solemn and how grand the streets again, with 
their great, dark, mournful palaces, and many legends : not 
of siege, and war, and might, and Iron Hand alone, but of the 
triumphant growth of peaceful Arts and Sciences. 

What light is shed upon the world, at this day, from 
amidst these rugged Palaces of Florence ! Here, open to aU 
comers, in their beautiful and calm retreats, the ancient 
Scu].ptors are immortal, side by side with Michael Angelo, 
Canova, Titian, Rembrandt, Raphael, Poets, Historians, 
Philosophers — those illustrious men of history, beside whom 
its crowned heads and harnessed warriors show so poor and 
small, and are so soon forgotten. Here, the imperishable 
part of noble minds survives, placid and equal, when strong- 
holds of assault and defence are overthrown; when the 



180 PICTURES FROM ITALY. 

tyranny of tlie many, or tlie few, or both., is but a tale ; when 
Pride and Power are so much, cloistered dust. The fire 
■^dthin the stern streets, and among the massive Palaces and 
Towers, kindled by rays from Heaven, is still burning 
brightly, when the flickering of war is extinguished and the 
household fires of generations have decayed; as thousands 
upon thousands of faces, rigid with the strife and passion of 
the hour, have faded out of the old Squares and public haunts, 
while the nameless Florentine Lady, preserved from oblivion 
by a Painter's hand, yet lives on, in endiuing grace and 
youth. 

Let us look back on Florence while we may, and when its 
shining Dome is seen no more, go travelling through cheerful 
Tuscany, with a bright remembrance of it ; for Italy will be 
the fairer for the recollection. The summer time being come : 
and Genoa, and Milan, and the Lake of Como lying far 
behind us : and we resting at Faido, a Swiss village, near the 
awful rocks and mountains, the everlasting snows and roaring 
cataracts, of the Great Saint Gothard : hearing the Italian 
tongue for the last time on this journey: let us part from 
Italy, with all its miseries and wrongs, affectionately, in our 
admiration of the beauties, natural and artificial, of which it 
is full to overflowing, and in our tenderness towards a people, 
natiu'ally well disposed, and patient, and sweet tempered. 
Years of neglect, oppression, and misrule, have been at work, 
to change their nature and reduce their spirit ; miserable 
jealousies, fomented by petty Princes to whom union was 
destruction, and division strength, have been a canker at the 
root of their nationality, and have barbarized their language ; 
but the good that was in them ever, is in them yet, and a 
noble people may be, one day, raised up from these ashes. 
Let us entertain that hope ! And let us not remember Italy 
the less regardfully, because, in every fragment of her fallen. 
Temples, and every stone of her deserted palaces and prisons, 
she helps to inculcate the lesson that the wheel of Time is 
roUing for an end, and that the world is, in all great 
essentials, better, gentler, more forbearing, and more hopeful, 
as it rolls I 



AMERICAN" NOTES. 



PREFACE. 



My readers have opportunities of judging for themselves 
whether the influences and tendencies which I distrusted 
in America, had any existence but in my imagination. They 
can examine for themselves whether there has been anything 
in the public career of that coimtry since, at home or abroad, 
which suggests that those influences and tendencies reaUy 
did exist. As they find the fact, they will judge me. If 
they discern any evidences of wrong-going, in any direction 
that I have indicated, they will acknowledge that I had 
reason in what I wrote. If they discern no such thing, they 
will consider me altogether mistaken — but not wiKully. 

Prejudiced, I am not, and never have been, otherwise 
than in favour of the United States. I have many friends in 
America, I feel a grateful interest in the country, I hope 
and believe it will successfully work out a problem of the 
highest importance to the whole human race. To represent 
me as viewing Ameeica with ill-nature, coldness, or ani- 
mosity, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is 
always a very easy one. 



,^^_ 




, , ,. i-:*" i.i-vu'4 sVv 



.,a.n;;;;n Hates. 



AMERICAN NOTES. 



CHAPTEE I. 

GOING AWAT. 



I SHALL never forget the one-foiirtli serious and three-fourths 
comical astonishment, with which, on the morning of the 
third of January eighteen -hundi-ed-and-forty-two, I opened 
the door of, and put my head into, a ''state room" on board 
the Britannia steam-packet, twelve him.dred tons burthen per 
register, bound for Halifax and Boston, and carrying Her 
Majesty's mails. 

That this state-room had been specially engaged for 
*' Charles Dickens, Esquire, and Lady," was rendered suffi- 
ciently clear even to toj scared intellect by a very small manu- 
script, announcing the fact, which was pinned on a very flat 
quilt, covering a very thin mattress, spread like a surgical 
plaster on a most inaccessible shelf. But that this was the 
state-room concerning which Charles Dickens, Esquire, and 
Lady, had held daily and nightly conferences for at least four 
months preceding : that this could by any possibility be that 
small snug chamber of the imagination, which Charles 
Dickens, Esquire, with the spirit of prophecy strong upon 
him, had always foretold would contain at least one little sofa, 
and which his lady, A^ith a modest yet most magnificent sense 
of its limited dimensions, had from the first opined would not 
hold more than two enormous portmanteaus in some odd 
corner out of sight (portmanteaus which could now no moro 
be got in at the door, not to say stowed away, than a giraffe 
could be persuaded or forced into a flower-pot) : that this 
utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly 
preposterous box, had the remotest reference to, or connec- 



186 AMERICAN NOTES 

tion witli, those cliaste and pretty, not to say gorgeous little 
bowers, sketched by a masterly hand, in the highly varnished 
lithographic plan hanging up in the agent's counting-house in 
the city of London : that this room of state, in short, could be 
anything but a pleasant fiction and cheerful jest of the 
captain's, invented and put in practice for the better relisli 
and enjoyment of the real state-room presently to be disclosed: 
— these were ti'uths which I really could not, for the moment, 
bring my mind at all to bear upon or comprehend. And I sat 
down upon a kind of horsehair slab, or perch, of which there 
were two within ; and looked, without any expression of coun- 
tenance whatever, at some friends who had come on board with 
us, and who were crushing their faces into all manner of shapes 
by endeavouring to squeeze them through the small doorway. 
We had experienced a pretty smart shock before coming 
below, which, but that we were the most sanguine people 
living, might have prepared us for the worst. The imagi- 
native artist to whom I have already made allusion, has de- 
picted in the same great work, a chamber of almost intermin- 
able perspective, furnished, as Mr. Robins would say, in a 
stjle of more than Eastern splendour, and filled (but not 
inconveniently so) vrith. groups of ladies and gentlemen, in the 
very highest state of enjojonent and vivacity. Before de- 
scending into the bowels of the ship, we had passed from the 
deck into a long narrow apartment, not unlike a gigantic 
hearse with windows in the sides ; having at the upper end a 
melancholy stove, at which three or four chilly stewards were 
warming their hands ; while on either side, extending down 
its whole dreary length, was a long, long, table, over each of 
which a rack, fix:ed to the low roof, and stuck full of drinking- 
glasses and cruet-stands, hinted dismally at rolling seas, and 
heavy weather. I had not at that time seen the ideal pre- 
sentment of this chamber which has since gratified me so 
much, but I observed that one of our friends who had made 
the arrangements for our voyage, turned pale on entering, 
retreated on the friend behind him, smote liis forehead in- 
voluntarily, and said below his breath, " Impossible ! it cannot 
be ! " or words to that effect. He recovered himself however 
by a great effort, and after a preparatory cough or two, cried, 
with a ghastly smile which is still before me, looking at the 
same time round tlie walls, '* Ha ! the breakfast-room, stewixrd 
— eh ? " We all foresaw what the answer must be : we knew 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 187 

the agony he suffered. He had often spoken of the saloon ; 
had taken in and lived upon the pictorial idea ; had usually 
given us to understand, at home, that to form a just conception 
of it, it would be necessary to multiply the size and furniture 
of an ordinary drawing-room by seven, and then fall short of 
the reality. "When the man in reply avowed the truth ; the 
blunt, remorseless, naked truth ; " This is the saloon, sir" — he 
actually reeled beneath the blow. 

In persons who were so soon to part, and interpose between 
their else daily communication the formidable barrier of many 
thousand miles of stormy space, and who were for that reason 
anxious to cast no other cloud, not even the passing shadow of 
a moment's disappointment or discomfiture, upon the short 
interval of happy companionship that yet remained to them — 
in persons so situated, the natural transition from these first 
surprises was obviously into peals of hearty laughter ; and I can 
report that I, for one, being still seated upon the slab or perch 
before-mentioned, roared outright until the vessel rang again. 
Thus, in less than two minutes after coming upon it for the 
first time, we all by common consent agreed that this state- 
room was the pleasantest and most facetious and capital con- 
trivance possible ; and that to have had it one inch larger, 
would have been quite a disagreeable and deplorable state of 
things. And with this; and with showing how, — by very 
nearly closing the door, and twining in and out like serpents, 
and by counting the little washing slab as standing-room, — 
we could manage to insinuate four people into it, all at one 
time ; and entreating each other to observe how very airy it 
was (in dock), and how there was a beautiful port-hole which 
could be kept open all day (weather permitting), and how 
there was quite a large bull's eye just over the looking-glass 
which would render shaving a perfectly easy and delightful 
process (when the ship didn't roll too much) ; we arrived, at 
last, at the unanimous conclusion that it was rather spacious 
than otherwise : though I do verily believe that, deducting 
the two berths, one above the other, than which nothing 
smaller for sleeping in was ever made except cofiins, it was no 
bigger than one of those hackney cabriolets which have the 
door behind, and shoot their fares out, like sacks of coals upon 
the pavement. 

Having settled this point to the perfect satisfaction of aU 
parties, concerned and unconcerned, we sat down round the 



188 AMERICAN NOTES 

fire in the ladies' cabin — just to try the effect. It was rather 
dark, certainly ; but somebody said, '' of course it would be 
light at sea," a proposition to which we all assented; echoing 
" of coui'se, of course ; " though it would be exceedingly 
difficult to say why we thought so. I remember, too, when 
we had discovered and exhausted another topic of consolation 
in the circumstance of this ladies' cabin adjoining our state- 
room, and the consequently immense feasibility of sitting there 
at all times and seasons, and had fallen into a momentary 
silence, leaning our faces on our hands and looking at the fire, 
one of our party said, with the solemn air of a man who had 
made a discovery, " What a relish mulled claret will have 
down here ! " which appeared to strike us all most forcibly ; 
as though there were something spicy and high-flavoured in 
cabins, which essentially improved that composition, and ren- 
dered it quite incapable of perfection anywhere else. 

There was a stewardess, too, actively engaged in producing 
clean sheets and ta1jJ.ecloths from the very entrails of the sofas, 
and from unexpected lockers, of such artful mechanism that it 
made one's head ache to see them opened one after another, 
and rendered it quite a distracting circumstance to follow her 
proceedings, and to find that every nook and corner and in- 
dividual piece of fui-niture was something else besides what 
it pretended to be, and was a mere trap and deception and 
place of secret stowage, whose ostensible purpose was its least 
useful one. 

God bless that stewardess for her piously fraudulent account 
of January voyages ! God bless her for her clear recollection 
of the companion passage of last year, when nobody was ill, 
and everybody danced from morning to night, and it was *' a 
run" of twelve days, and a piece of the purest frolic, 
and delight, and jollity ! All happiness be with her for her 
bright face and her pleasant Scotch tongue, which had sounds 
of old Home in it for my fellow traveller ; and for her pre- 
dictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or I 
shouldn' t be half so fond of her) ; and for the ten thousand 
small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by Avhich, without 
piecing them elaborately together, and patching them up into 
Bhape and form and case and pointed application, she never- 
theless did plainly show that all young mothers on one side of 
the Atlantic were near and close at hand to tlieir little cliildren 
left upon the other ; and that what seemed to the uninitiated 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 189 

a serious joiu'iiey, was, to those wlio were in tlie secret, a mere 
fL'olie, to be sung- about and whistled at ! Light be her heart, 
and gay her merry eyes, for years ! 

The state-room had grown pretty fast ; but by this time it 
had expanded into something quite bulky, and almost boasted 
a bay-window to view the sea from. So we went upon deck 
again in high spirits; and there, everything was in such a 
state of bustle and active preparation, that the blood quickened 
its pace, and whirled through one's veins on that clear frosty 
morning with involuntary mirthfulness. For every gallant 
ship was riding slowly up and down, and every little boat was 
plashing noisily in the water ; and knots of people stood upon 
the wharf, gazing with a kind of '' dread delight " on the far- 
famed fast American steamer ; and one party of men were 
'taking in the milk," or, in other words, getting the cow on 
board; and another were filling the icehouses to the very 
throat with fresh provisions ; with butchers' -meat and garden- 
stuff, pale sucking-pigs, calves' heads in scores, beef, veal, and 
pork, and poultry out of all proportion; and others Avere 
coiling ropes, and busy with oakum yarns ; and others were 
lowering heavy packages into the hold; and the purser's head 
was barely visible as it loomed in a state of exc^uisite per- 
plexity from the midst of a vast pile of passengers' luggage ; 
and there seemed to be nothing going on anywhere, or upper- 
most in the mind of anybody, but preparations for this 
mighty voyage. This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing 
air, the crisply-curling water, the thin white crust of morning 
ice upon the decks which crackled with a sharp and cheerful 
sound beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, 
again upon the shore, we turned and saw from the vessel's 
mast her name signalled in flags of joyous colours, and flutter- 
ing by their side the beautiful American banner with its stars 
and stripes, — the long three thousand miles and more, and, 
longer still, the six whole months of absence, so dwindled and 
faded, that the ship had gone out and come home again, and 
it was broad spring aheady in the Coburg Dock at Liverpool. 

I have not inquired among my medical acquaintance, 
whether Turtle, and cold Punch, with Hock, Champagne, and 
Claret, and all the slight et cetera usually included in an un- 
limited order for a good dinner — especially when it is left to 
the liberal construction of mj faultless friend, Mr. Radley of 
the Adeiphi Hotel — are peculiarly calculated to sxiffer a sea- 



^^^ AMERICAN NOTES 

change ; or whether a plain mutton-chop, and a glass or two 
of sherry, would be less likely of conversion into foreign and 
disconcerting material. My o\^ti opinion is, that whether one 
is discreet or indiscreet in these particulars, on the eve of a 
Bea- voyage, is a matter of little consequence ; and that, to use 
a common phrase, ''it comes to very much the same thing in 
the end." Be this as it may, I know that the dinner of that 
day was undeniably perfect ; that it comprehended all these 
items, and a great many more ; and that we all did ample 
justice to it. And I know too, that, bating a certain tacit 
avoidance of any allusion to to-morrow; such as may be 
supposed to prevail between delicate-minded turnkeys, and a 
sensitive prisoner who is to be hanged next morning ; we got 
on very well, and, all things considered, were merry enough. 

^"\^len the morning — the morning — came, and we met at 
breakfast, it was curious to see how eager we all were to 
prevent a moment's pause in the conversation, and how 
astoundingly gay everybody was : the forced spirits of each 
member of the little party having as much likeness to his 
natural mirth, as hot-house peas at five guineas the quart, 
resemble in flavour the growth of the dews, and air, and rain 
of Heaven. But as one o' clock, the hour for going aboard, 
drew near, this volubility dwindled away by little and little, 
despite the most persevering efibrts to the contrary, im.til at 
last, the matter being now quite desperate, we threw off all 
disguise ; openly speculated upon where we should be this 
time to-morrow, this time next day, and so forth; and en- 
trusted a vast number of messages to those who intended 
returning to town that night, which were to be delivered at 
home and elsewhere without fail, within the very shortest 
possible space of time after the arrival of the railway train at 
Euston Square. And commissions and remembrances do so 
crowd upon one at such a time, that we were still busied with 
this employment when we found ourselves fused, as it were, 
into a dense conglomeration of passengers and passengers* 
friends and passengers' luggage, all jumbled together on the 
deck of a small steamboat, and panting and snorting off to the 
packet, which had worked out of dock yesterday afternoon and 
was now lying at her moorings in the river. 

And there she is ! all eyes are turned to where she lies, 
dimly discernible tlirougli the gathering fog of the early 
winter afternoon; every fiuger is pointed in the same direc- 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 191 

tion ; and murm-ors of interest and admiration — as " How 
beautiful she looks!" **How trim she is!" — are heard on 
every side. Even the lazy gentleman with his hat on one side 
and his hands in his pockets, who has dispensed so much 
consolation by iu quiring with a yawn of another gentleman 
whether he is " going across " — as if it were a ferry — even 
he condescends to look that way, and nod his head, as who 
should say, " No mistake about that: " and not even the sage 
Lord Burleigh in his nod, included half so much as this lazy 
gentleman of might who has made the passage (as everybody 
on board has found out already ; it 's impossible to say how) 
thirteen times without a single accident ! There is another 
passenger very much wrapped-up, who has been frowned down 
by the rest, and morally trampled upon and crushed, for 
presuming to inquire with a timid interest how long it is since 
the poor President went down. He is standing close to the 
lazy gentleman, and says with a faint smile that he believes 
She is a very strong Ship ; to which the lazy gentleman looking 
first in his questioner's eye and then very hard in the sand's, 
answers unexpectedly and ominously, that She need be. Upon 
this the lazy gentleman instantly falls very low in the popular 
estimation, and the passengers, with looks of defiance, whisper 
to each other that he is an ass, and an impostor, and clearly 
don't know anything at aU about it. 

But we are made fast alongside the packet, whose huge red 
funnel is smoking bravely, giving rich promise of serious 
intentions. Packing-cases, portmanteaus, carpet-bags, and 
boxes, are already passed from hand to hand, and hauled on 
board with breathless rapidity. The officers, smartly dressed, 
are at the gangway handing the passengers up the side, and 
hurrying the men. In five minutes' time, the little steamer is 
utterly deserted, and the packet is beset and over-run by its 
late freight, who instantly pervade the whole ship, and are to be 
met with by the dozen in every nook and corner : swarming 
down below with their own baggage, and stumbling over other 
people's ; disposing themselves comfortably in wrong cabins, 
and creating a most horrible confusion by having to turn out 
again ; madly bent upon opening locked doors, and on forcing 
a passage into aU kinds of out-of-the-way places where there 
is no thoroughfare ; sending wild stewards, with elfin hair, to 
and fro upon the breezy decks on unintelligible errands, 
impossible of execution: and in short, creating the most 



192 AMERICAN NOTES 

extraordinary and bewildering- tumult. In the midst of all 
this, the lazy gentleman, who seems to have no luggage of 
any kind — not so much as a friend, even — lounges up and 
do'UTi the liurricane-deck, coolly puffing a cigar ; and, as this 
unconcerned demeanour again exalts him in the opinion of 
those who have leisure to observe his proceedings, every time 
he looks up at the masts, or down at the decks, or over the 
side, they look there too, as wondering whether he sees any- 
thing wrong anywhere, and hoping that, in case he should, he 
will have the goodness to mention it, 

What have we here ? The captain's boat ! and yonder the 
captain himself. Now, by all our hopes and wishes, the very 
man he ought to be ! A well-made, tight-built, dapper little 
fellow ; with a ruddy face, wliicli is a letter of invitation to 
shake him by both hands at once ; and with a clear, blue 
honest eye, that it does one good to see one's sparkling image 
in. ''Ring the bell ! " " Ding, ding, ding ! " the very bell 
is in a hurry. " Now for the shore — who 's for the shore ? " 
— "These gentlemen, I am sorry to say." They are away, 
and never said, Good b'ye. Ah ! now they wave it from the 
little boat. " Good Wje ! Good b'ye ! " Three cheers from 
them , three more from us ; three more from them ; and they 
are gone. 

To and fro, to and fro, to and fi'o again a hundred times ! 
This waiting for the latest mail-bags is worse than all. If we 
could have gone off in the midst of that last burst, we should 
have started triumphantly : but to lie here, two hours and 
more, in the damp fog, neither stapng at home nor going 
abroad, is letting one gradually down into the very depths of 
dulness and low spirits. A speck in the mist, at last ! That 's 
somethins:. It is the boat we wait for ! That 's more to the 
purpose. The captain appears on the paddle-box with his 
speaking-trumpet ; the officers take their stations ; all hands 
are on the alert ; the flagging hopes of the passengers revive ; 
the cooks pause in their savoury work, and look out with faces 
full of interest. The boat comes alongside ; the bags are 
dragged in anyhow, and flung down for the moment anywliere. 
Three cheers more : and as the first one rings upon our ears, 
the vessel throbs like a strong giant that has just received the 
breatli of life ; the two great -^A'heels turn fiercely round for the 
fij'st time ; and the noble ship, with wind and tide astern, 
breaks proudly thi'ough the lashed and foaming water. 



^ 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 193 



CHAPTER XL 

THE PASSAGE OUT. 

We all dined together that day ; and a rather formidable 
party we were : no fewer than eighty- six strong. The vessel 
being prettj^ deep in the water, with all her coals on board 
and so many passengers, and the weather being calm and 
quiet, there was but little motion ; so that before the dinner 
was half over, even those passengers who were most distrust- 
ful of themselves plucked up amazingly ; and those who in 
the morning had returned to the universal question, " Are you 
a good sailor?" a very decided negative, now either parried 
the inquiry with the evasive reply, '' Oh! I suppose I 'm no 
worse than anybody else ; " or, reckless of aU moral obliga- 
tions, answered boldly '' Yes : " and with some irritation too, 
as though they would add, "I should like to know what you 
see in me, sir, particular^, to justify suspicion ! " 

Notwithstanding this high tone of courage and confidence, 
I could not but observe that very few remained long over their 
wine ; and that everybody had an unusual love of the open air ; 
and that the favourite and most coveted seats were invariably 
those nearest to the door. The tea-table, too, was by no 
means as well attended as the dinner-table ; and there was less 
"whist-plajdng than might have been expected. Still, with the 
exception of one lady, who had retired with some precipita- 
tion at dinner-time, immediately after being assisted to the 
finest cut of a very yellow boiled leg of mutton with very green 
capers, there were no invalids as yet; and walking, and 
smoking, and drinking of brandy-and-water (but always in 
the open air), went on with unabated spirit, until eleven 
o 'clock or thereabouts, when '' turning in ' ' — no sailor of seven 
hours' experience talks of going to bed — became the order of 
the night. The perpetual tramp of boot-heels on the decks 
gave place to a heavy silence, and the whole human freight 

o 



194 AMERICAN NOTES 

was stowed away below, excepting a very few strngglers, like 
myself, avIio were probably, like me, afraid to go tliere. 

To one unaccustomed to such scenes, this is a very striking 
time on shipboard. Afterwards, and when its novelty had long 
worn off, it never ceased to have a peculiar interest and charm 
for me. The gloom tlirough which the great black mass holds 
its direct and certain course ; the rushing water, plainly heard, 
but dimly seen; the broad, white, glistening track, that 
follows in the vessel's wake ; the men on the look-out forward, 
who would be scarcely visible against the dark sk}'-, but for 
their blotting out some score of glistening stars ; the helmsman 
at the wheel, with the illuminated card before him, shining, a 
speck of light amidst the darkness, like something sentient 
and o^f Divine intelligence ; the melancholy sighing of the 
wind through block, and rope, and chain ; the gleaming forth 
of light from every crevice, nook, and tiny piece of glass about 
the decks, as though the ship were filled with fire in hiding, 
ready to bui'st through any outlet, Avild with its resistless power 
of death and ruin. At first, too, and even when the hour, and 
all the objects it exalts, have come to be familiar, it is 
difficult, alone and thouglitfid, to hold tliem to tlieir proper 
shapes and forms. They change with the wandering fancy; 
assume the semblance of things left far away ; put on the well- 
remembered aspect of favourite places dearly loved ; and even 
people them with shadows. Streets, houses, rooms ; figures 
so like their usual occupants, that they have startled me by 
their realitj^ which far exceeded, as it seemed to me, all power 
of mine to conjure up the absent; have, many and many a 
time, at such an hour, grown suddenly out of objects with 
whose real look, and use, and purpose, I was as well ac- 
quainted as with my own two hands. 

Mj OA\Ti two hands, and feet likewise, being very cold, how- 
ever, on this particidar occasion, I crept below at midnight. 
It was not exactly comfortable below. li was decidedly close ; 
and it was impossible to be unconscious of the presence of that 
extraordinary compound of strange smells, which is to be 
found nowhere but on board ship, and which is such a subtle 
perfume that it seems to enter at every pore of the skin, and 
whisper of the hold. Two passengers' wives (one of them 
my own) lay already in silent agonies on the sofa ; and one 
lady's maid {my lady's) was a mere bundle on the floor, 
execrating her destiny, and pounding her curl-papers among 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 195 

the stray boxes. Ever}i;liing' sloped tlie wrong Tray : which 
in itself "was an aggravation scarcely to be borne, I had left 
the door open, a moment before, in the bosom of a gentle de- 
clivity, and, wlien I turned to shut it, it was on the summit o/ 
a loft}'' eminence. Now every plank and timber creal^ed, as if 
the ship were made of wicker-work ; and now craclded, like 
an enormous fire of tlie driest possible twigs. There was 
nothing for it but bed ; so I went to bed. 

It was pretty much the same for the next two daj^s, with a 
tolerably fair wind and dry weather. I read in bed (but to 
this hour I don't know what) a good deal ; and reeled on deck 
a little ; drank cold brandy-and-water with an unspeakable 
disgust, and ate hard biscuit perse veringly : not ill but going 
to be. 

It is the third morning. I am awakened out of my sleep 
by a dismal shriek from my wife, who demands to know 
whether there 's any danger. I rouse niyself, and look out of 
bed. The water -jug is plunging and leaping like a lively 
dolphin ; all the smaller articles are afloat, except my shoes, 
which are stranded on a carpet-bag, high and dry, like a 
couple of coal-barges. Suddenly I see them spring into the 
air, and behold the looking-glass, which is nailed to the wall, 
sticking fast upon the ceiling. At the same time the door 
entirely disappears, and a new one is opened in the floor. 
Tlien I begin to comprehend that the state-room is standing 
on its head. 

Before it is possible to make any arrangement at all com- 
patible with this novel state of things, the sldp rights. 
Before one can say, *' Thank Heaven!" she wrongs again. 
Before one can cry she is wrong, she seems to have started 
forward, and to be a cri^ature actively running of its own ac- 
cord, with broken knees and failing legs, through every variety 
of hole and pitiall, and stumbling constantly. Before one can 
so much as wonder, she tikes a high leap into the air. Bcfo:e 
she has well done that, she takes a deep dive into the water. 
Before she has gained the surface, she throws a summerset. 
The instant she is on her legs, she rushes backward. And so 
she goes on staggering, htiaving, wrestling, leaping, diving, 
jumping, pitching, throbbing, rolling, and rocking : and going 
through all these movements, sometimes by turns, and some- 
times all together : until one feels disposed to roar for mercy 

A steward passes. ''Steward I" "Sirr" "What is the 

o2 



196 AMERICAN NOTES 

matter? what do you call this ? " " Eather a heavy sea on, sir, 
ajid a head- wind." 

A head-wind ! Imagine a human face upon the vessel's 
prow, with fifteen thousand Samsons in one bent upon 
driving her back, and hitting her exactly between the eyes 
whenever she attempts to advance an inch. Imagine the ship 
herself, with every pulse and artery of her huge body swoln 
and bursting under this maltreatment, sworn to go on or die. 
Imagine the wind howling, the sea roaring, the rain beating : 
all in furious array against her. Picture the sky both dark 
and wild, and the clouds, in fearful sympatliy with the waves, 
making another ocean in the air. Add to all this, the clatter- 
ing on deck and down below ; the tread of huiTied feet ; the 
loud hoarse shouts of seamen ; tlie gui-gling in and out of 
water through the scuppers ; with, every now and then, ihe 
striking of a heavy sea upon the planks above, with the deep, 
dead, heavy sound of thunder heard within a vaidt; — and 
there is the head- wind of that Januarv mornino;'. 

I say nothing of what may be called the domestic noises of 
the ship : such as the breaking of glass and crockery, the 
tumbling down of stewards, the gambols, overhead, of loose 
casks and truant dozens of bottled porter, and the very re- 
markable and far from exhilarating sounds raised in their 
various state-rooms hj the seventy passengers who were too 
ill to get up to breakfast. I say nothing of them : for 
although I lay listening to this concert for three or four days, 
I don't think I heard it for more than a quarter of a minute, 
-at the expiration of which term, I lay down again, excessively 
sea-sick. 

Not sea-sick, be it understood, in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term : I wish I had been : but in a form which I have 
never seen or heard described, tliough I have no doubt it is 
very common. I lay there, all the day long, quite coolly and 
contentedly ; with no sense of weariness, with no desire to get 
up, or get better, or take the au* ; with no cui'iosity, or care, 
or regret, of any sort or degree, saving that I think I can 
remember, in this universal indifference, having a kind of lazy 
joy — of fiendish deliglit, if anything so lethargic can be 
dignified with the title — in the fact of my wife being too ill to 
talk to me. If I may be allowed to illustrate my state of 
mind by such an example, I should say that I was exactly in 
the condition of the elder Mr. AVillet, after tlie incui'sion of 






FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 197 

tlie rioters into Ms bar at Chigwell. NotMng would have 
surprised me. If, in the momentary illumination of any ray 
of intelligence that may have come upon me in the way of 
thoughts of Home, a goblin postman, with a scarlet coat and 
bell, had come into that little kennel before me, broad awake 
in broad day, and, apologising for being damp through 
walliing in the sea, had handed me a letter, directed to mj^self, 
in familiar characters, I am certain I should not have felt one 
atom of astonishment : I should have been perfectly satisfied. 
If Neptune himself had walked in, with a toasted shark on his 
trident, I should have looked upon the event as one of the 
very commonest everyday occurrences. 

Once — once — I found myself on deck. I don't know how 
I got there, or what possessed me to go there, but there I was ; 
and completely dressed too, with a huge pea-coat on, and a 
pair of boots such as no weak man in his senses could ever 
have got into. I found myself standing, when a gleam of 
consciousness came upon me, holding on to something. I 
don't know what. I think it was the boatswain : or it may 
have been the pump : or possibly the cow. I can't say how 
long I had been there ; whether a day or a minute. I recollect 
trjT.ng to think about something (about an}i;hing in the whole 
wide world, I was not particular) Avithout the smallest effect. 
I could not even make out which was the sea, and which the 
sky; for the horizon seemed drunk, and was flying wildly 
about, in all directions. Even in that incapable state, how- 
ever, I recognised the lazy gentleman standing before me : 
nautically clad in a suit of shaggy blue, with an oilskin hat. 
But I was too imbecile, although I knew it to be he, to 
separate him from his dress ; and tried to call him, I re- 
member. Pilot. After another interval of total unconscious- 
ness, I found he had gone, and recognised another figure in 
its place. It seemed to wave and fluctuate before me as though 
I saw it reflected in an unsteady looking-glass ; but I knew it 
for the captain ; and such was the cheerful influence of his 
face, that I tried to smile : yes, even then I tried to smile. I 
saw by his gestures that he addressed me ; but it was a long 
time before I could make out that he remonstrated against my 
standing up to my knees in water — as I was ; of course I don't 
know wh}'. I tried to thank him, but couldn't. I could only 
point to my boots — or wherever I supposed my boots to be — • 
and say in a plaintive voice, " Cork soles ; " at the same time 



198 AMERICAN NOTES 

endeavouring, I am told, to sit down in the pool. Finding 
that I was qiiile insensible, and for the time a maniac, he 
hiunanely conducted me below. 

There I remained until I got better: suffering, whenever I 
was recommended to eat anything, an amount of anguish only 
second to that which is said to be endured by the apparently 
drowned, in the process of restoration to life. One gentleiuau 
on board liad a letter of introduction to me from a mutual 
friend in London, Ho sent it below with his card, on the 
morning of the liead-wind ; and I Avas long troubled with the 
idea that he might be up, and well, and a hundred times 
a-day expecting me to call upon him in the saloon. I imagined 
him one of those cast-iron images — I will not call them men 
— who ask, with red faces and lusty voices, what sea-sicknes3 
means, and whether it really is as bad as it is represented to 
be. This was very torturing indeed ; and I don't think I ever 
felt such perfect gratification and gratitude of heart, as I did 
when I heard from the ship's doctor tliat he had been obliged 
to put a large mustard poultice on this very gentleman's 
stomach. I date my recover}'- from the receipt of that in- 
telligence. 

It was materially assisted though, I liave no doubt, by a 
heav}' gale of wind, which came slowl}' up at sunset, when we 
were about ten days out, and raged with graduidh' increasing 
fury until morning, saving that it lulled for an hour a little 
before midnight. There was something in the unnatural 
repose of that hour, and in the after gathering of the storm, 
so inconceivabl}^ a^ful and tremendous, that its bui-sting into 
full violence was almost a relief. 

The labouring of the ship in the troubled sea on this night 
I shall never forget. "Will it ever be worse than this?" 
was a question I had often heard asked, when everything was 
sliding and bumping about, and when it certainly did seem 
dillicult to comprehend the possibility of anytliing afloat being 
more disturbed, without toppling over and going down. Ihit 
what the agitation of a steam -vessel is, on a bad winler's night 
in the wihl Allantic, it is impossible for the most vivid 
imagination to conceive. To say that she is flung down on 
her side in the waves, with lier masts dipping into them, and 
that, springing up again, she rolls over on the other side, until 
a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of a hundred great guns, 
and hui-ls her back — that she stops, and staggers, and iihivcrs, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 199 

as thoiigli stunned, and tlien, with a violent throbbing at her 
heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into madness, to be 
beaten down, and battered, and crushed, and leaped on by the 
angry sea — that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and wind, 
are all in fierce contention for the mastery — that every plank 
has its groan, every nail its sliriek, and every drop of water in 
the great ocean its howling voice — is nothing. To say that 
all is grand, and all appalling and horrible in the last degree, 
is nothing. Words cannot express it. Thoughts cannot 
convey it. Only a dream can call it up again, in all its fury, 
rage, and passion. 

And 3^et, in the very midst of these terrors, I was placed in 
a situation so exquisitely ridiculous, that even then I had as 
strong a sense of its absurdity as I have now : and could no 
more help laughing than I can at any other comical incident, 
happening under circumstances the most favourable to its 
enjoyment. About midnight we shipped a sea, which forced 
its way through the skylights, burst open the doors above, 
and came raging and roaring down into the ladies' cabin, to 
the unspeakable consternation of my wife and a little Scotch 
lady- — who, by the way, had previously sent a message to the 
captain by the stewardess, requesting him, with her compli- 
ments, to have a steel conductor immediately attached to the 
top of every mast, and to the chimnej'-, in order that the ship 
might not be struck by lightning. They, and the handmaid 
before-mentioned, being in such ecstacies of fear that I scarcely 
knew what to do with them, I naturally bethought mj-self of 
some restorative or comfortable cordial ; and nothing better 
occurring to me, at the moment, than hot brandy-and- water, I 
procured a tumbler-full without delay. It being impossible 
to stand or sit without holding on, they were all heaped 
together in one corner of a long sofa — a fixture, extending 
entirely across the cabin — where they clung to each other 
in momentary expectation of being droTSTied. When I 
approached this place with my specific, and was about to 
administer it, w^ith many consolatory expressions, to the 
nearest sufferer, what was my dismay to see them all roll 
slowl}^ do^vn to the other end ! And when I staggered to that 
end, and held out the glass once more, how immensely baffied 
were my good intentions by tlie ship giving another lurch, and 
their all rolling back again ! I suppose I dodged them up and 
down this sofa, for at least a quarter of an hour, without 



200 AMERICAN NOTES 

reaching them once ; and by the time I did catch them, the 
brandy-and-water was diminished, by constant spilling, to a 
tea-spoonful. To complete the group, it is necessary to re- 
cognise in this disconcerted dodger, an individual very pale 
from sea-sickness, who had shaved his beard and brushed his 
hair, last, at Liverpool : and whose only articles of dress (linen 
not included) were a pair of dreadnought trousers ; a blue 
jacket, formerly admired upon the Thames at Richmond ; no 
stockings ; and one slipper. 

Of the outrageous antics performed by that ship next 
morning ; which made bed a practical joke, and getting up, 
by any process short of falling out, an impossibility ; I say 
nothing. But anything like the utter dreariness and deso- 
lation that met my eyes when I, Kterally ** tumbled up" on 
deck at noon, I never saw. Ocean and sky were all of one 
dull, heavy, uniform, lead colour. There was no extent of 
prospect even over the dreary waste that lay around us, for 
the sea ran high, and the horizon encompassed us like a large 
black hoop. Viewed from the air, or some tall bluff on shore, 
it would have been imposing and stupendous, no doubt ; but 
seen from the wet and rolling decks, it only impressed one 
giddily and painfully. In the gale of last night the life-boat 
had been crushed by one blow of the sea like a walnut- shell ; 
and there it hung dangling in the air : a mere faggot of crazy 
boards. The planking of the paddle-boxes had been torn 
sheer away. The wheels were exposed and bare ; and they 
whirled and dashed their spray about the decks at random. 
Chimney, white with crusted salt; topmasts struck; storm- 
sails set ; rigging all knotted, tangled, wet, and drooping : a 
gloomier picture it would be hard to look upon. 

I was now comfortably established by courtesy in the ladies* 
cabin, where, besides ourselves, there were only four other 
passengers. First, the little Scotch lady before-mentioned, on 
her way to join her husband at New York, who had settled 
there three years before. Secondly and thirdly, an honest 
young Yorkshireman, connected Avith some American house; 
domiciled in that same city, and carrying tliither his beautiful 
young wife, to whom he had been married but a fortniglit, 
and who was tlie fairest specimen of a comely English country 
girl I have ever seen. Fourtlily, fiftlily, and lastly, another 
couple : newly married too, if one might judge from the 
endearments tliey fi-equeutly interchanged : of whom I know 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 201 

no more than tliat tliey were rather a mysterious, run-away 
kind of couple ; that the lady had great personal attractions 
also ; and that the gentleman carried more guns with him 
than Robinson Crusoe, wore a shooting-coat, and had two 
great dogs on board. On further consideration, I remember 
that he tried hot roast pig and bottled ale as a cure for sea- 
sickness ; and that he took these remedies (usually in bed) 
day after day, with astonishing perseverance. I may add, for 
the information of the curious, that they decidedly failed. 

The weather continuing obstinately and almost unprece- 
dentedly bad, we usually straggled into this cabin, more or 
less faint and miserable, about an hour before noon, and lay 
dowii on the sofas to recover ; during which interval, the 
captain would look in to communicate the state of the wind, 
the moral certainty of its changing to-morrow (the weather 
is always going to improve to-morrow, at sea), the vessel's 
rate of sailing, and so forth. Observations there were none 
to tell us of, for there was no sun to take them by. But a 
description of one day will serve for all the rest. Here it is. 

The captain being gone, we compose ourselves to read, if 
the place be light enough; and if not, we doze and talk 
alternately. At one, a bell rings, and the stewardess comes 
down with a steaming dish of baked potatoes, and another of 
roasted apples; and plates of pig's face, cold ham, salt beef; 
or perhaps a smoking mess of rare hot collops. We fall-to 
upon these dainties ; eat as much as we can (we have great 
appetites now) ; and are as long as possible about it. If the 
fire will burn (it ivill sometimes) we are pretty cheerful. If it 
won't, we all remark to each other that it 's very cold, rub our 
hands, cover ourselves with coats and cloaks, and lie down 
again to doze, talk, and read (provided as aforesaid), until 
dinner-time. At five, another bell rings, and the stewardess 
re-appears with another dish of potatoes — boiled this time — 
and store of hot meat of various kinds : not forgetting the 
roast pig, to be taken medicinally. We sit down at table 
again (rather more cheerfully than before) ; prolong the meal 
with a rather mouldy dessert of apples, grapes, and oranges ; 
and drink our wine and brandy-and-water. The bottles and 
glasses are still upon the table, and the oranges and so forth 
are rolling about according to their fancy and the ship's way, 
when the doctor comes down, by special nightly invitation, to 
join our evening rubber : immediately on whose arrival we 



202 AMERICAN NOTES 

malce a party at Tvhist, and as it is a rough night and tlie 
cards will not lie on the cloth, -we put the tiicks in our pockets 
as we take them. At whist we remain with exemplary 
gravity (deducting a short time for tea and toast) until eleven 
o'clock, or thereabouts ; when the captain comes do-\vn again, 
in a sou' -wester hat tied under his chin, and a pilot-coat : 
making the ground wet where he stands. By this time the 
card-phwing is over, and the bottles and glasses are again 
upon the table ; and after an hour's pleasant conversation 
about the ship, the passengers, and things in general, the 
captain (who never goes to bed, and is never out of humour) 
turns up his coat collar for the deck again ; shakes hands 
all round ; and goes laughing out into the weather as merrily 
as to a birth-day party. 

As to daily news, there is no dearth of that commodity. 
This passenger is reported to have lost fourteen pounds at 
Vingt-et-im in the saloon yesterday ; and that passenger 
drinks his bottle of champagne every day, and how he does it 
(being only a clerk), nobody knows. The head engineer has 
distinctly said that there never was such times — meaning 
weather — and four good hands are ill, and have given in, 
dead beat. Several berths are full of water, and all the 
cabins are leaky. The sliip's cook, secretly swigging damaged 
whiskey, has been found drunk ; and has been played upon 
by the fire-engine imtil quite sober. AH the stewards have 
fallen down-stairs at various dinner-times, and go about M'ith 
plasters in various places. The baker is ill, and so is the 
pastry-cook. A new man, horribly indisposed, has been 
required to fill the place of the latter ofiicer ; and has been 
propped and jammed up M'ith empty casks in a little house 
upon deck, and commanded to roU out pie-crusts, which he 
protests (being highly bilious) it is death to him to look at. 
News ! A dozen niiu-ders on shore would lack the interest of 
these sliglit incidents at sea. 

Divided between our rubber and such topics as these, we 
were running (as we thought) into Halifax Harbour, on the 
fifteenth night, with little wind and a bright moon — indeed, 
we had made the Light at its outer entrance, and put the pilot 
in charge — when suddenly the ship struck upon a bank of 
mud. An immediate rush on deck took place of course ; the 
Bides were crowded in an instant ; and for a few minutes we 
wore in as lively a state of confusion as the greatest lover of 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 203 

disorder -would desire to see. The passengers, and guns, 
and ^\■ater-casks, and otlier heavy matters, being all huddled 
together aft, however, to lighten her in the liead, she was 
soon got off; and after some driving on towards an uncom- 
fortable line of objects (whose vicinity had been announced 
very early in the disaster by a loud cry of ''Breakers a-head!") 
and much backing of paddles, and heaving of the lead into 
a constantly decreasing depth of water, we dropped anchor in 
a strange outlandish-looking nook which nobody on board 
could recognise, although there was land all about us and, so 
close that we could plainly see the waving branches of the 
trees. 

It was strange enough, in the silence of midnight, and the 
dead stillness that seemed to be created by the sudden and 
unexpected stoppage of the engine whicli had been clanking 
and blasting in our ears incessantly for so many days, to 
watch the look of blank astonishment expressed in every face : 
beginning with the oihcers, tracing it through all the passen- 
gers, and descending to the very stokers and furnace-men, 
who emerged from below, one by one, and clustered together 
in a smoky group about the hatchway of the engine-room, 
comparing notes in whispers. After throwing up a few 
rockets and firing signal-guns in the hope of being hailed 
from the land, or at least of seeing a light — but without any 
other sight or sound presenting itself — it was determined to 
send a boat on shore. It was amusing to observe how very 
kind some of the passengers were, in volunteering to go 
ashore in this same boat : for the general good, of course : 
not by any means because they thought the ship in an unsafe 
position, or contemplated the possibility of her heeling over 
in case the tide were running out. Nor was it less amusing 
to remark how desperately unpopular the poor pilot became 
in one short minute. He had had his passage out from 
Liverpool, and during the whole voyage had been quite a 
notorious character, as a teller of anecdotes and cracker of 
jokes. Yet here were the very men who had laughed the 
loudest at his jests, now floui-ishing their fists in his face, 
loading him with imprecations,, and defying him to his teeth 
as a villain ! 

The boat soon shoved off, with a lantern and sundry blue 
lights on board ; and in less than an hour returned ; the 
ofhcer in command bringing with him a tolerably tall young 



204 AMERICAN NOTES 

tree, whicli lie tad plucked up by the roots, to satisfy certain 
distrustful passeug;ers whose ini:ids misgave them that they 
were to be imposed upon and shipwrecked, and who would on 
no other terms believe that he had been ashore, or had done 
anything but fraudulently row a little way into the mist, 
specially to deceive them and compass their deaths. Our 
captain had foreseen from the first that we must be in a place 
called the Eastern passage ; and so we were. It was about 
the last place in the world in which we had any business or 
reason to be, but a sudden fog, and some error on the pilot's 
part, were the cause. "We were surrounded by banks, and 
rocks, and shoals of all kinds, but had happily drifted, it 
seemed, upon the only safe speck that was to be found there- 
abouts. Eased by this report, and by the assurance that 
the tide was past the ebb, we tui-ned in at three o'clock in the 
morning. 

I was dressing about half-past nine next day, when the 
noise above hurried me on deck. When I had left it over- 
night, it was dark, foggy, and damp, and there were bleak 
hills all round us. Now, we were gliding down a smooth, 
broad stream, at the rate of eleven miles an hour : our colours 
flying gaily ; our crew rigged out in their smartest clothes ; 
our officers in uniform again ; the sun shining as on a 
brilliant April day in England ; the land stretched out on 
either side, streaked with light patches of snow ; white wooden 
houses ; people at their doors ; telegraphs working ; flags 
hoisted; Avharves appearing; ships; quays crowded with people; 
distant noises ; shouts ; men and boys running do\vn steep 
places towards the pier : all more bright and gay and fresh 
to our unused eyes than words can paint them. We came to 
a wharf, paved with uplifted faces ; got alongside, and were 
made fast, after some shouting and straining of cables ; 
dartod, a score of us along the gangway, almost as soon as it 
was thrust out to meet us, and before it had reached the ship 
— and leaped upon the firm glad earth again ! 

I suppose this Haliftix would have appeared an Elysium, 
though it had been a curiosity of ugl}" dulness. But I carried 
away with me a most pleasant impression of the town and its 
inliabitants, and liave preserved it to this hour. Nor was it 
without regret that I came home, without having found an 
opportunity of returning thither, and once more shiiking 
hands with the friends I made that day. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 205 

It happened to be the opening of the Legislative Council 
and General Assembly, at which Ceremonial the forms 
observed on the commencement of a new Session of Parlia- 
ment in England were so closely copied, and so gravely 
presented on a small scale, that it was like looking at West- 
minster through the wrong end of a telescope. The governor, 
as her Majesty's representative, delivered what may be called 
the Speech from the Throne. He said what he had to say 
manfuUy and well. The military band outside the building 
struck up " God save the Queen " with great vigour before 
his Excellency had quite finished ; the people shouted ; the 
ins rubbed their hands ; the outs shook their heads ; the 
Government part}^ said there never was such a good speech ; 
the opposition declared there never was such a bad one ; the 
Speaker and members of the House of Assembly withdrew 
from the bar to say a great deal among themselves and do a 
little : and in short, everything went on, and promised to go 
on, just as it does at home upon the like occasions. 

The town is built on the side of a hill, the highest point 
being commanded by a strong fortress, not yet quite finished. 
Several streets of good breadth and appearance extend from 
its summit to the water-side, and are intersected by cross 
streets running parallel with the river. The houses are 
chiefly of wood. The market is abundantly supplied : and 
provisions are exceedingly cheap. The weather being un- 
usually mild at that time for the season of the year, there was 
no sleighing : but there were plenty of those vehicles in yards 
and bye-places, and some of them, from the gorgeous quality 
of their decorations, might have ''gone on" without alteration 
as triumphal cars in a melodrama at Astley's, The day was 
uncommonly fine ; the air bracing and healthful ; the whole 
aspect of the town cheerful, thi-iving, and industiious. 

We lay there seven hours, to deliver and exchange the 
mails. At length, having collected all our bags and all our 
passengers (including two or three choice spii^its, who, having 
indulged too freely in oysters and champagne, were found 
IjiTig insensible on their backs in unfrequented sti-eets), the 
engines were again put in motion, and we stood off for 
Boston. 

Encountering squally weather again in the Bay of Fundy, 
we tumbled and rolled about as usual all that night and all 
next day. On the next afternoon, that is to say, on Saturday, 



206 AMERICAN NOTES 

the twenty-second of January, an American pilot-'boat came 
alongside, and soon afterwards the Britannia steam-packet 
from Liverpool, eighteen days out, was telegraphed at 
Boston. 

The indescribable interest with which I strained my eyes, 
as the fii'st patches of American soil peeped like molehills 
from the green sea, and followed them, as they swelled, by 
slow and almost imperceptible degrees, into a continuous line 
of coast, can hardly be exaggerated. A sharp keen wind 
blew dead against us ; a hard frost prevailed on shore ; and 
the cold was most severe. Yet the air was so intensely clear, 
and dry, and bright, that the temperature was not only 
endurable, but delicious. 

How I remained on deck, staring about me, until we came 
alongside the dock, and how, though I had had as many eyes 
as Argus, I shoidd have had them all wide open, and all 
emplo3^ed on new objects — are topics which I will not prolong 
this chapter to discuss. Neither will I more than hint at my 
foreio-ner-like mistake, in supposing that a party of most 
active persons, who scrambled on board at the peril of their 
lives as we approached the wharf, were newsmen, answering 
to that industrious class at home ; whereas, des2)ite the 
leathern wallets of news slung about the necks of some, and 
the broad sheets in the hands of all, they were Editors, who 
boarded ships in person (as one gentleman in a worsted 
comforter informed me), '' because they liked the excitement 
of it." Suffice it in this place to say, that one of these 
invaders, with a ready courtesy for which I thank him here 
most gratefully, went on before to order rooms at the hotel; 
and that when I followed, as I soon did, I found myself 
rolling through the long passages with an involuntary imita- 
tion of ihe gait of Mr. T. P. Cooke, in a new nautical melo- 
drama. 

" Dinner, if you please," said I to the waiter. 

*' When ? " said the waiter. 

*' As quick as possible," said I. 

*' Iliglit away? " said the waiter. 

After a moment's hesitation, I answered, " No," at hazard 

"Not right away?" cried the waiter, with an amount of 
surprise that made me start. 

1 looked at him doubtfully, and returned, '' No ; I would 
rather have it in this private room. I like it very much." 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 207 

At tills, I really thought the waiter must have gone out of 
his mind ; as I believe he would have done, but for the 
interposition of another man, who whispered in his ear, 
" Directly." 

'* Well ! and that 's a fact ! " said the waiter, looking help- 
lessly at me : '' Right away." 

I saw now that "Right away" and ''Directly" were one 
and the same thing. So I reversed my previous answer, and 
sat down to dinner in ten minutes afterwards ; and a capital 
dinner it was. 

The hotel (a very excellent one), is called the Tremont 
House. It has more galleries, colonnades, piazzas, and 
passages than I can remember, or the reader would believe. 



208 AMERICAN NOTES 



CHAPTER HX 



BOSTON. 



In all the public establishments of America, the utmost 
courtesy prevails. Most of our Departments are susceptible 
of considerable improvement in this respect, but the Custom- 
house above all others would do well to take example from 
the United States, and render itself somewhat less odious and 
offensive to foreigners. The servile rapacity of the French 
officials is sufficiently contemptible ; but there is a siuiy 
boorish incivility about our men, alike disgusting to all 
persons who fall into their hands, and discreditable to the 
nation that keeps such ill-conditioned curs snarling about its 
gates. 

^\Tien I landed in America, I could not help being strongly 
impressed with the contrast their Custom-house presented, and 
the attention, politeness and good humour with which its 
officers discharged their duty. 

As we did not land at Boston, in consequence of some 
detention at the wharf, until after dark, I received my first 
impressions of the city in walking do^n to the Custom-house 
on the morning after our arrival, which was Simday. I am 
afraid to say, by the way, how many offers of pews and seats 
in church for that morning were made to us, by formal note 
of invitation, before we had half finished our first dinner in 
America, but if I may be allowed to make a moderate guess, 
without going into nicer calculation, I should say that at least 
as many sittings were proffered us, as would have accom- 
modated a score or two of grown-up families. The number 
of creeds and forms of religion to wliich tlie pleasure of our 
conix^<T-iiy was requested, was in very fair proportion. 

Not being able, in the absence of any change of clothes, 
to go to church that day, we were compelled to decline these 
kindnesses, one and all ; and I was reluctantl}'- obliged to 
forci^o the delight of hearing Dr. Channing, who happened to 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 209 

preach that morning for the first time in a very long interval. 
I mention the name of this distinguished and accomplished 
man (with whom I soon afterwards had the pleasure of 
becoming personally acquainted), that I may have the grati- 
fication of recording my humble tribute of admiration and 
respect for his high abilities and character ; and for the bold 
philanthropy with which he has ever opposed himself to that 
most hideous blot and foul disgrace — Slavery. 

To return to Boston. When I got into the streets upon 
this Sunday morning, the air was so clear, the houses were so 
bright and gay ; the signboards were painted in such gaudy 
colours ; the gilded letters were so very golden ; the bricks 
were so very red, the stone was so very white, the blinds and 
area railings were so very green, the knobs and plates upon 
the street doors so marvellously bright and twinkling ; and 
aU so slight and unsubstantial in appearance" — that every, 
thoroughfare in the city looked exactly like a scene in a 
pantomime. It rarely happens in the business streets that a 
tradesman — if I may venture to call anybody a tradesman, 
where everybody is a merchant — resides above his store ; so 
that many occupations are often carried on in one house, and 
the whole front is covered with boards and inscriptions. As I 
walked along, I kept glancing up at these boards, confidently 
expecting to see a few of them change into something ; and I 
never turned a corner suddenly without looking out for the 
clown and pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a 
doorway or behind some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin 
and Columbine, I discovered immediately that they lodged 
(they ar^ always looking after lodgings in a pantomime) at a 
very small clock-maker's, one story high, near the hotel ; 
which, in addition to various symbols and devices, almost 
covering the whole front, had a great dial hanging out — to be 
jumped through, of course. 

The suburbs are, if possible, even more unsubstantial- 
looking than the city. The white wooden houses (so white 
that it makes one wink to look at them), with their green 
jalousie blinds, are so sprinkled and dropped about in all 
directions, without seeming to have any root at all in the 
ground ; and the small churches and chapels are so prim, and 
bright, and highly varnished; that I almost believed the 
whole afPair could be taken up piecemeal like a child's toy, 
and crammed into a little box. 



210 AMERICAN NOTES 

The city is a "beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should 
imag-ine, to impress all strangers very favourably. The 
private dwelling-houses are, for the most part, large and 
elegant ; the shops extremely good ; and the public buildings 
handsome. The State House is built upon the summit of a 
hill, wliich rises gradually at first, and afterwards by a steep 
ascent, almost from the water's edge. In front is a green 
inclosure, called the Common. The site is beautiful : and 
from tlie top there is a charming panoramic view of the wliole 
town and neighbourhood. In addition to a variety of com- 
modious offices, it contains two handsome chambers : in one 
the House of Representatives of the State hold their meetings: 
in the other, the Senate. Such proceedings as I saw here, 
were conducted with perfect gravity and decorum ; and were 
certainly calculated to inspire attention and respect. 

Tliere is no doubt that much of the intellectual refinement 
and superiority of Boston, is referable to the quiet influence 
of the University of Cambridge, which is within three or four 
miles of the city. The resident professors at that university 
are gentlemen of learning and varied attainments ; and are, 
without one exception that I can call to mind, men who woidd 
shed a grace upon, and do honour to, any society in the 
civilised world. Many of the resident gentry in Boston and 
its neighbourhood, and I thinlc I am not mistaken in adding, 
a large majority of those who are attached to tlie liberal 
professions there, have been educated at this same school. 
Whatever the defects of American universities may be, they 
disseminate no prejudices ; rear no bigots; dig up the buried 
ashes of no old superstitions ; never interpose between the 
people and their improvement; exclude no man because of 
his religious opinions; above all, in their whole course of 
study and instruction, recognise a world, and a broad one too, 
lying beyond the college walls. 

It was a source of inexpressible pleasure to me to observe 
the almost imperceptible, but not less certain effect, wrought 
by this institution among the small community of Boston ; 
and to note at every turn the liumani3iug tastes and desires it 
has engendered ; the affectionate friendships to which it has 
given rise ; the amount of vanity and prejudice it has dis- 
pelled. The golden calf tliey worship at Boston is a pigmy 
compared with tlie giant effigies set up in other parts of that 
vast counting-house which lies beyond the Atlantic ; and the 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 211 

almig'Tity dollar sinks into something comparatively insignifi- 
cant, amidst a whole Pantheon of better gods. 

Above all, I sincerely believe that the public institutions and 
charities of this capital of Massachusetts are as nearly perfect, 
as the most considerate wisdom, benevolence, and humanity, 
can make them. I never in my life was more affected by the 
contemplation of happiness, under circumstances of privation 
and bereavement, than in my visits to these establishments. 

It is a great and pleasant feature of all such institutions in 
America, that they are either supported by the State or assisted 
by the State ; or (in the event of their not needing its lielping 
hand) tliat they act in concert with it, and are emphatically 
the people's. I cannot but think, with a view to the principle 
and its tendency to elevate or depress the character of the 
industrious classes, that a Public Charity is immeasurably 
better than a Private Foundation, no matter how munificently 
the latter may be endowed. In our own country, where it baa 
not, until within these later days, been a very popular fashion 
with governments to display any extraordinar}^ regard for the 
great mass of the people, or to recognise their existence as im- 
proveable creatures, private charities, unexampled in the 
history of the earth, have arisen, to do an incalculable amount 
of good among the destitute and afflicted. But the government 
of the country, having neither act nor part in them, is not in 
the receipt of any portion of the gratitude they inspire ; and, 
ofiering very little shelter or relief beyond that which is to be 
found in the workhouse and the jail, has come, not unnaturally, 
to be looked upon by the poor rather as a stern master, quick 
to correct and pimisli, than a kind protector, merciful and 
vigilant in their hour of need. 

The maxim that out of evil cometh good, is strongly 
illustrated by these establishments at home ; as the records of 
the Prerogative Office iu Doctors' Commons can abundantly 
prove. Some immensely rich old gentleman or lady, surrounded 
by needy relatives, makes, upon a low average, a will a-week. 
TJie old gentleman or lady, never very remarkable in tlie best 
of times for good temper, is full of aches and pains from head 
to foot ; full of fancies and caprices ; full of spleen, distrust, 
suspicion, and dislike. To cancel old wills, and invent new 
ones, is at last the sole business of such a testator's existence ; 
and relations and friends (some of whom have been bred up 
distinctly to inherit a large share of the property, and have 



212 AMERICAN IsOTES 

been, from their cradles, specially disqualified from devoting 
themselves to any useful pursuit, on that account) are so often 
and so unexpectedl}"- and summarily cut off, and re -instated, 
and cut off again, that the whole family, down to the remotest 
cousin, is kept in a perpetual fever. At length it becomes 
plain that the old lady or gentleman has not long to live ; and 
the plainer this becomes, the more clearly the old lady or 
gentleman perceives that everybody is in a conspiracy against 
their poor old dying relative ; wherefore the old lady or gentle- 
man makes another last will — positively the last this time — 
conceals the same in a cliina tea-pot, and expires next day. 
Then it turns out, that the whole of the real and personal 
estate is divided between half-a-dozen charities ; and that the 
dead and gone testator has in pure spite helped to do a great 
deal of good, at the cost of an immense amount of evil passion 
and misery. 

The Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the 
Blind, at Boston, is superintended by a body of trustees who 
make an annual report to the corporation. The indigent blind of 
that state are admitted gratuitously. Those from the adjoining 
state of Connecticut, or from the states of Maine, Vermont, or 
New Hampshire, are admitted by a warrant from the state to 
which they respectively belong ; or, failing that, must find 
security among their friends, for the pa^nnent of about twenty 
pounds English for their fii'st year's board and instruction, and 
ten for the second. *' After the first year," say the trustees, 
*' an account current will be opened with each pupil ; he will 
be charged with the actual cost of his board, which will not 
exceed two dollars per week ; " a trifle more than eight 
shillings English; '' and he will be credited with the amount 
paid for him by the state, or by his friends ; also with his 
earnings over and above the cost of the stock which he uses ; 
so that all his earnings over one dollar per week will be his 
own. By the third year it will be known whether his earnings 
will more than pay the actual cost of his board ; if they should, 
he will have it at his option to remain and receive his earnings, 
or not. Those who prove unable to earn their own livelihood 
wiU not be retained ; as it is not desirable to convert the 
establishment into an almshouse, or to retain any but 
working bees in the hive. Tliose who by physical or 
mental imbecility are disqualified for work, are thereby 
disqualified fi-om being members of an industrious commu- 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 213 

nity ; and they can be better provided for in establisbments 
fitted for the infirm.'* 

I went to see tliis place one very fine winter morning : an 
Italian sky above, and the air so clear and bright on every 
side, that even my eyes, which are none of the best, could 
follow the minute lines and scraps of tracery in distant 
buildings. Like most other public institutions in America, of 
the same class, it stands a mile or two without the town, in a 
cheerful healthy spot ; and is an airy, spacious, handsome 
edifice. It is built upon a height, commanding the harbour. 
When I paused for a moment at the door, and marked how 
fresh and free the whole scene was — what sparkling bubbles 
glanced upon the waves, and welled up every moment to the 
surface, as though the world below, like that above, were 
radiant with the bright day, and gushing over in its fulness of 
light : when I gazed from sail to sail away upon a ship at sea, 
a tiny speck of shining white, the only cloud upon the still, 
deep, distant blue — and, turning, saw a blind boy with his 
sightless face addressed that way, as though he too had some 
sense within him of the glorious distance : I felt a kind of 
sorrow that the place should be so very light, and a strange 
wish that for his sake it were darker. It was but momentary, 
of course, and a mere fancy, but I felt it keenly for all that. 

The children were at their daily tasks in different rooms, 
except a few who were already dismissed, and were at ]play. 
Here, as in many institutions, no uniform is worn ; and I was 
very glad of it, for two reasons. Firstly, because I am sure 
that nothing but senseless custom and want of thought would 
reconcile us to the liveries and badges we are so fond of at 
home. Secondly, because the absence of these things presents 
each child to the visitor in his or her own proper character, 
with its individuality unimpaired; not lost in a dull, ugly, 
monotonous repetition of the same unmeaning garb : which is 
really an important consideration. The wisdom of encouraging 
a little harmless pride in personal appearance even a,mong the 
blind, or the whimsical absurdity of considering charity and 
leather breeches inseparable companions, as we do, requires no 
comment. 

Good order, cleanliness, and comfort, pervaded every corner 
of the building. The various classes, who were gathered 
round their teachers, answered the questions put to them with 
readiness and intelligence, and in a spiiit of cheerfiil contest 



214 AMERICAN NOTES 

for precedence which pleased me very much. Those Tvho were 
at play, were gleesome and noisy as other cliildren. More 
spiritual and affectionate friendships appeared to exist among 
them, than would be found among other young persons 
suffering under no deprivation ; but this I expected and was 
prepared to find. It is a part of the great scheme of Heaven's 
merciftJ consideration for the afiiicted. 

In a portion of the building, set apart for that purpose, are 
workshops for blind persons whose education is finished, and 
who have accjuired a trade, but who cannot piu-sue it in an 
ordinary manufactory because of their deprivation. Several 
people were at work here; making brushes, mattresses, and 
so forth ; and the cheerfulness, industry, and good order dis- 
cernible in every other part of the building, extended to this 
department also. 

On the ringing of a bell, the pupils all repaired, without 
any guide or leader, to a spacious music-hall, where they took 
their seats in an orchestra erected for that purpose, and 
listened with manifest deliglit to a voluntary on the organ, 
played by one of tliemselves. At its conclusion, the per- 
former, a boy of nineteen or twentj^ gave place to a girl ; 
and to her accompaniment they all sang a hymn, and after- 
wards a sort of chorus. It was veiy sad to look upon and 
hear them, happy though their condition unquestionably was ; 
and I saw that one blind girl, who (being for the time deprived 
of the use of her limbs, by illness) sat close beside me with 
her face towards them, wept silently the while she listened. 

It is strange to watch the faces of the blind, and see how 
free they are from all concealment of what is passing in their 
thoughts ; observing which, a man with eyes may blush to 
contemplate the mask he wears. Allowing for one shade of 
anxious expression which is never absent from their coun- 
tenances, and the like of which we may readily detect in our 
own faces if we try to feel our way in the dark, ever}' idea, as 
it rises within them, is expressed with the lightning's speed, 
and nature's truth. If the comjiany at a rout, or drawing- 
room at court, could only for one time be as unconscious of the 
eyes upon them as blind men and women are, what secrets 
would come out, and Avhat a worker of hypocrisy tliis sight, 
the loss of which we so much pity, wouhl appear to be ! 

The thouglit occurred to me as I sat down in another room, 
before a giil, blind, deaf, and dumb .- destitute of smell ; and 



FOE GENERAL CIRCULATION. 215 

nearly so, of taste : before a fair yoimg- creature Tvitli every 
human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection, 
inclosed witliin her delicate frame, and but one outward 
sense — the sense of touch. There she was, before me ; built 
up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of 
lig-ht, or particle of sound ; with her poor white hand peeping 
through a chink in the wall, beckoning to some good man for 
help, that an Immortal soul might be awakened. 

Long before I looked upon her, the help had come. Her 
face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, 
braided by her own hands, was bound about a head, whose 
intellectual capacity and development were beautifully ex- 
pressed in its gracefiJ outline, and its broad open brow ; her 
dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and sim- 
plicity ; the work she had knitted, lay beside her ; her writing- 
book was on the desk she leaned upon. From the moui^nful 
ruin of such bereavement, there had slowly risen up this 
gentle, tender, guileless, gratefid-hearted being. 

Like other inmates of that house, she had a green ribbon 
bound round her eyelids. A doll she had dressed lay near 
upon the ground. I took it up, and saw that she had made 
a green fillet such as she wore herself, and fastened it about 
its mimic eyes. 

She was seated in a little enclosure, made by school-desks 
and forms, writing her daily journal. But soon finishing this 
pursuit, she engaged in an animated communication with a 
teacher who sat beside her. This was a favouiite mistress 
wdth the poor pupil. If she could see the face of her fair 
instructress, she would not love her less, I am sure. 

I have extracted a few disjointed fragments of her history, 
from an account, written by that one man who has made her 
what she is. It is a very beautiful and touching narrative ; 
and I wish I could present it entii-e. 

Her name is Laui-a Bridgman. *' She was born in Hanover, 
New Hampshire, on the twenty -fii'st of December, 1829. She 
is described as having been a very sprightly and pretty infant, 
with bright blue eyes. She was, however, so puny and feeble 
until she was a year and a-half old, that her parents hardly 
hoped to rear her. She was subject to severe fits, which 
seemed to rack her frame almost beyond her power of endur- 
ance : and life was held by the feeblest tenure : but when a 
year and a-half old, she seemed to rally j the dangerous 



216 AIMERICAN NOTES 

symptoms subsided ; and at twenty months old, slie was 
perfectly veU. 

" Then her mental powers, hitherto stinted in their growth, 
rapidly developed" themselves; and during the four months 
of health which she enjoyed, she appears (making due allow- 
ance for a fond mother's account) to have displayed a con- 
siderable degree of intelligence. 

" But suddenly she sickened again ; her disease raged with 
great violence during five weeks, when her eyes and ears were 
inflamed, suppurated, and their contents were discharged. 
But though sight and hearing were gone for ever, the poor 
child's sufferings were not ended. The fever raged during 
seven weeks ; for five months she was kept in bed in a 
darkened room ; it was a year before she could walk unsup- 
ported, and two years before she could sit up all day. It was 
now observed that her sense of smell was almost entirely 
destroj'ed ; and, consequently, that her taste was much 
blunted. 

'' It was not until four years of age that the poor child's 
bodily health seemed restored, and she was able to enter upon 
her apprenticeship of life and the world. 

" But what a situation was hers ! The darkness and the 
silence of the tomb were around her : no mother's smile 
called forth her answering smile, no father's voice taught her 
to imitate his sounds : — they, brothers and sisters, were but 
forms of matter which resisted her touch, but which difi'ered 
not from the foi-niture of the house, save in warmth, and in 
the power of locomotion ; and not even in these respects from 
the clog and the cat. 

^' But the immortal spirit which had been implanted within 
her could not die, nor be maimed nor mutilated ; and though 
most of its avenues of communication with the world were 
cut off, it began to manifest itself tlu'ough the others. As 
soon as she could walk, she began to explore the room, and 
then the house ; she became familiar with the form, density, 
weight, and heat, of every article she could lay her hands 
upon. She followed her mother, and felt her hands and arms, 
as she was occupied about the house ; and he* disposition to 
imitate, led her to repeat everything herself. She even 
learned to sew a little, and to knit." 

Tlie reader will scarcely need to be told, however, that the 
opportunities of communicating with her, were very, very 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 217 

limited ; and that the moral efiPects of her wretched state soon 
began to appear. Those who cannot be enlightened by 
reason, can only be controlled by force ; and this, coupled 
with her great privations, must soon have reduced her to a 
worse condition than that of the beasts that perish, but for 
timely and unhoped-for aid. 

** At this time, I was so fortunate as to hear of the child, 
and immediately hastened to Hanover to see her. I found her 
with a well-formed figure ; a strongly-marked, nervous- 
sanguine temperament ; a large and beautifully-shaped head ; 
and the whole system in healthy action. The parents were 
easily induced to consent to her coming to Boston, and on 
the 4th of October, 1837, they brought her to the Institution. 

*' For a Avhile, she was much bewildered ; and after waiting 
about two weeks, until she became acquainted with her new 
locality, and somewhat familiar with the inmates, the attempt 
was made to give her knowledge of arbitrary signs, by which 
she could interchange thoughts with others. 

** There was one of two ways to be adopted : either to go on 
to build up a language of signs on the basis of the natural 
language which she had abeady commenced herself, or to teach 
her the purely arbitrary language in common use : that is, to 
give her a sign for every individual thing, or to give her a know- 
ledge of letters by combination of which she might express her 
idea of the existence, and the mode and condition of existence, 
of any thing. The former would have been easy, but very 
ineffectual ; the latter seemed very difficult, but, if accomplished, 
very effectual. I determined therefore to try the latter. 

"The first experiments were made by taking articles in 
common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, keys, &c., and 
pasting upon them labels with their names printed in raised 
letters; These she felt very carefully, and soon, of course, 
distinguished that the crooked lines sjpoon, differed as much 
from the crooked lines key, as the spoon differed from the key 
in form. 

" Then small detached labels, with the same words printed 
upon them, were put into her hands ; and she soon observed 
that they were sisp-ilar to the ones pasted on the articles. She 
showed her perception of this similarity by laying the label 
hey upon the key, and the label spoon upon the spoon. 
She was encouraged here by the natural sign of approbation^ 
patting on the head. 



218 AMERICAN NOTES 

'• The same process was then repeated with all the articles 
which she could handle ; and she very easily learned to place 
the proper labels upon them. It was evident, however, that 
the only intellectual exercise was that of imitation and 
memory. She recollected that the label hook was placed 
upon a book, and she repeated the process fii-st from imita- 
tion, next from memory, with only the motive of lOve of 
approbation, but apparently without the intellectual perception 
of any relation between the things. 

''After a while, instead of labels, the individual letters 
were given to her on detached bits of paper : they were 
arranged side by side so as to spell hook, key, &c. ; then 
they were mixed up in a heap, and a sign was made for her to 
arrange them herself, so as to express the words hook, key, 
&c. ; and she did so. 

*' Hitherto, the process had been mechanical, and the suc- 
cess about as great as teaching a very knowing dog a variety 
of tricks. The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and 
patiently imitated everything her teacher did ; but now the 
truth began to flash upon her : her intellect began to work : 
she perceived that here was a way by which she could herself 
make up a sign of anything that was in her own mind, and 
show it to another mind ; and at once her countenance 
lighted up with a human expression : it was no longer a dog, 
or parrot : it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a 
new link of union with other spirits ! I could almost fix 
upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, 
and spread its light to her countenance ; I saw that the great 
obstacle was overcome ; and that henceforward nothing but 
patient and persevering, but plain and straightforward, efforts 
were to be used. 

** The result, thus far, is quickly related, and easily conceived ; 
but not so was the process ; for many weeks of appai'ently 
unprofitable labour were passed before it was effected. 

" When it was said above, that a sign was made, it was 
intended to say that the action was performed by her teacher, 
she feeling his hands, and then imitating the motion. 

*' The next step was to procure a set of metal types, with 
the different letters of the alphabet cast upon their ends ; also 
a board, in which were square holes, into which holes she 
could set the t^q^es ; so that the letters on their ends could 
alone be felt above the sui-face. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 219 

" Tben, on any article being handed to her, — for instance, 
a pencil, or a watch, — she would select the component letters, 
and arrange them on her board, and read them with apparent 
pleasure. 

" She was exercised for several weeks in this way, tintil her 
vocabulary became extensive ; and then the important step 
was taken of teaching her how to represent the difi'erent 
letters by the position of her fingers, instead of the cum- 
brous apparatus of the board and types. She accomplished 
this speedily and easily, for her intellect had begun to work 
in aid of her teacher, and her progress was rapid. 

" This was the period, about three months after she had 
commenced, that the first report of her case was made, in 
which it is stated that * she has just learned the manual 
alphabet, as used by the deaf mutes, and it is a subject of 
delight and wonder to see how rapidly, correctly, and 
eagerly, she goes on with her labours. Her teacher gives 
her a new object, — for instance, a pencil, — first lets her examine 
it, and get an idea of its use, then teaches her how to 
spell it by making the signs for the letters with her own 
fingers : the child grasps her hand, and feels her fingers, 
as the different letters are formed ; she turns her head a 
little on one side, like a person listening closely ; her lips 
are apart ; she seems scarcely to breathe ; and her coun- 
tenance, at first anxious, gradually changes to a smile, as 
she comprehends the lesson. She then holds up her tiny 
fingers, and spells the word in the manual alphabet ; next, she 
takes her types and arranges her letters; and last, to 
make sure that she is right, she takes the whole of the types 
composing the word, and places them upon or in contact 
with the pencil, or whatever the object may be.' 

** The whole of the succeeding year was passed in gratifying 
her eager inquiries for the names of every object which she 
could possibly handle; in exercising her in the use of the 
manual alphabet ; in extending in every possible way her 
knowledge of the ph3^sical relations of things ; and in proper 
care of her health. 

" At the end of the year a report of her case was made, 
from which the following is an extract. 

*' ' It lias been ascertained beyond the possibility of doubt, 
that she cannot see a ray of liglit, cannot hear the least sound, 
and never exercises her sense of smell, if she have any. Thiis 



220 AMERICAN NOTES 

her mind dT\:elIs in darkness and stillness, as profound as that 
of a closed tomb at midnight. Of beautiful sights, and sweet 
sounds, and pleasant odours, she has no conception; never- 
theless, she seems as happy and plaj^ul as a bird or a lamb ; 
and the employment of her intellectual faculties, or the acquire- 
ment of a new idea, gives her a vivid pleasure, which is 
plainly marked in her expressive featiu-es. She never seems 
to repine, but has all the buoyancy and gaiety of childhood. 
She is fond of fun and frolic, and wlien playing with the rest of 
the children, her shrill laugh sounds loudest of the group. 

" ' When left alone, she seems very happy if she have her 
knitting or sewing, and will busy herself for hours : if she 
have no occupation, she evidently amuses herself by imaginary 
dialogues, or by recalling past impressions ; she counts with 
her fingers, or spells out names of things which she has 
recently learned, in the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes. 
In this lonely self-communion she seems to reason, reflect, and 
argue : if she spell a word wrong with the fingers of her right 
hand, she instantly strikes it with her left, as her teacher does, 
in sign of disapprobation ; if right, then she pats herself upon 
the head and looks pleased. She sometimes purposely spells 
a Tvord wrong -with the left hand, looks roguish for a moment 
and laughs, and then with the right hand strikes the left, as 
if to correct it. 

" ' During the year she has attained great dexterity in the 
use of the manual alphabet of the deaf mutes ; and she spells 
out the words and sentences which she knows, so fast and so 
deftly, that only those accustomed to this language can follow 
with the eye the rapid motions of her fingers. 

'' ' But wonderful as is the rapidity with which she writes 
her thoughts upon the air, still more so is the ease and 
accuracy with which she reads the words thus written by 
another; grasping their hands in hers, and following every 
movement of their fingers, as letter after letter conveys their 
meaning to her mind. It is in this way that she converses 
with her blind pla^Tnates, and nothing can more forcibly show 
the power of mind in forcing matter to its purpose than a 
meeting between them. For if great talent and skill are 
necessary for two pantomimes to paint their thoughts and 
feelings by the movements of the body, and the expression of 
the countenance, how much greater the difficulty when dark- 
ness shrouds them both, and the one can hear no sound ! 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 221 

** * When Laura is walking through a passage-way, with 
her hands spread before her, she knows instantly every one 
she meets, and passes them with a sign of recognition : but if 
it be a girl of her o\\ti age, and especially if it be one of her 
favourites, there is instantly a bright smile of recognition, 
and a twining of arms, a grasping of hands, and a swift tele- 
graphing upon the tiny fingers ; whose rapid evolutions 
convey the thoughts and feelings from the outposts of one 
mind to those of the other. There are questions and answers, 
exchanges of joy or sorrow, there are hissings and partings, 
just as between little children with all their senses.' 

" During this year, and six months after she had left home, 
her mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting 
was an interesting one. 

*' The mother stood some time, gazing with overflowing 
eyes upon her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her 
presence, was playing about the room. Presently Laura ran 
against her, and at once began feeling her hands, examining 
her dress, and trying to find out if she knew her ; but not 
succeeding in this, she turned away as from a stranger, and 
the poor woman could not conceal the pang she felt, at finding 
that her beloved child did not know her. 

" She then gave Laura a string of beads which she used to 
wear at home, which were recognised by the child at once, 
who, with much joy, put them around her neck, and sought 
me eagerly to say she understood the string was from her 
home. 

" The mother now tried to caress her, but poor Laura 
repelled her, preferring to be with her acquaintances. 

** Another article from home was now given her, and she 
began to look much interested ; she examined the stranger 
much closer, and gave me to understand that she knew she 
came from Hanover ; she even endured her caresses, but 
would leave her with indifference at the slightest signal. The 
distress of the mother was now painful to behold ; for, although 
she had feared that she should not be recognised, the painful 
reality of being treated with cold indifference by a darling 
child, was too much for woman's nature to bear. 

'' After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a 
vague idea seemed to flit across Laura's mind, that this could 
not be a stranger ; she therefore felt her hands very eagerly, 
while her countenance assumed an expression of intense interest; 



222 AMERICAN NOTES 

she became very pale, and then suddenly red ; hope seemed 
struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were contending 
emotions more strongly painted upon the human face : at 
this moment of painful uncertainty, the mother drew her 
close to her side, and kissed her fondly, when at once the 
truth flashed upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety 
disappeared from her face, as with an expression of exceeding 
joy she eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and 
yielded herself to her fond embraces. 

" After this, the beads were all unheeded ; the playthings 
which were offered to her were utterly disregarded ; her play- 
mates, for whom but a moment before she gladly left the 
stranger, now vainly strove to pull her from her mother ; and 
though she yielded her usual instantaneous obedience to my 
signal to follow me, it was evidently with painful reluctance. 
She clung close to me, as if bewildered and fearful ; and when, 
after a moment, I took her to her mother, she sprang to her 
arms, and clung to her with eager joy. 

'* The subsequent parting between them, showed alike the 
affection, the intelligence, and the resolution of the child. 

'' Laura acccompanied her mother to the door, clinging 

close to her all the way, until they arrived at the threshold, 

where she paused, and felt around to ascertain who was near 

her. Perceiving the matron, of whom she is very fond, she 

grasped her with one hand, holding on convulsively to her 

mother with the other ; and thus she stood for a moment : 

then she dropped her mother's hand ; put her handkerchief 

to her eyes ; and turning round, clung sobbing to the matron ; 

while her mother departed, with emotions as deep as those of 

her child. 

« • « « « 

" It has been remarked in former reports, that she can 
distinguish different degrees of intellect in others, and tliat 
she soon regarded almost with contempt, a newcomer, wlien, 
after a few days, she discovered her weakness of mind. This 
unamiable part of her character has been more strongly 
developed during the past j-^ear. 

" She chooses for her friends and companions, those children 
who are intelligent, and can talk best with her ; and she 
evidently dislikes Ito be with those who are deficient in 
intellect, unless, indeed, she can make them serve her 
purposes, which she is evidently inclined to do. She takes 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 223 

advantage of tliem, and makes them wait upon her, in a 
manner that she knows she could not exact of others ; and in 
various ways she shows her Saxon blood. 

** She is fond of having other children noticed and caressed 
by the teachers, and those whom she respects ; but this must 
not be carried too far, or she becomes jealous. She wants to 
have her share, which, if not the lion's, is the greater part; 
and if she does not get it, she says, ' 3iy mother will love me.^ 

" Her tendency to imitation is so strong, that it leads her 
to actions which must be entirely incomprehensible to her, 
and which can give her no other pleasure than the gratification 
of an internal faculty. She has been known to sit for half an 
hour, holding a book before her sightless eyes, and moving 
her lips, as she has observed seeing people do when reading. 

^' She one day pretended that her doU was sick; and went 
through all the motions of tending it, and giving it medicine ; 
she then put it carefully to bed, and placed a bottle of hot 
water to its feet, laughing all the time most heartily. When 
I came home, she insisted upon my going to see it, and feel 
its pulse ; and when I told her to put a blister on its back, 
she seemed to enjoy it amazingly, and almost screamed with 
delight. 

" Her social feelings, and her affections, are very strong ; 
and when she is sitting at work, or at her studies, by the side 
of one of her little friends, she will break off from her task 
every few moments, to hug and kiss them with an earnestness 
and warmth that is touching to behold. 

" When left alone, she occupies and apparently amuses 
herself, and seems quite contented ; and so strong seems to be 
the natural tendency of thought to put on the garb of lan- 
guage, that she often soliloquises in the finger language, slow 
and tedious as it is. But it is only when alone, that she is 
quiet : for if she becomes sensible of the presence of any one 
near her, she is restless until she can sit close beside them, 
hold their hand, and converse with them by signs. 

"^ In her intellectual character it is pleasing to observe an 
insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a quick perception of the 
relations of things. In her moral character, it is beautiful to 
behold her continual gladness, her keen enjojTaent of existence, 
her expansive love, her unhesitating confidence, her sympathy 
with suffering, her conscientiousness, truthfulness, and hope- 
fuhiess." 



224 AMERICAN NOTES 

Such are a few fragments firom the simple hut most 
interesting and instructive history of Laura Bridgman. The 
name of her great henefactor and friend, who writes it, is 
Doctor Howe. There are not many persons, I hope and 
believe, who, after reading these passages, can ever hear that 
name with indifference. 

A further account has been published by Dr. Howe, since 
the report from which I have just quoted. It describes her 
rapid mental growth and improvement during twelve months 
more, and brings her little history down to the end of last 
year. It is very remarkable, that as we dream in words, and 
carry on imaginary conversations, in which we speak both for 
ourselves and for the shadows who appear to us in those 
visions of the night, so she, having no Avords, uses her finger 
alphabet in her sleep. And it has been ascertained that when 
her slumber is broken, and is much disturbed by dreams, she 
expresses her thoughts in an irregular and confused manner 
on her fingers : just as we should murmur and mutter them 
indistinct!}', in the like circumstances. 

I turned over the leaves of her Diary, and found it written 
in a fair legible square hand, and expressed in terms which 
were quite intelligible without any explanation. On my 
saying that I should like to see her write again, the teaclier 
who sat beside her, bade her, in their language, sign her 
name upon a slip of paper, twice or thi-ice. In doing so, I 
observed that she kept her left hand always touching, and 
following up, her right, in which, of course, she held the pen. 
No line was indicated by any contrivance, but she wrote 
straight and freely. 

She had, until now, been quite unconscious of the presence 
of visitors ; but, having her hand placed in that of the 
gentleman who accompanied me, she immediately expressed 
his name upon her teacher's palm. Indeed her sense of touch 
is now so exquisite, that having been acquainted -with a 
person once, slie can recognise him or her after almost any 
interval. Tliis gentleman had been in her compau}^, I believe, 
but very seltjom, and certainly had not seen her for many 
months. My hand she rejected at once, as she does that of 
any man who is a stranger to lier. But slie retained my 
wife's with evident pleasure, kissed her, and examined her 
dress with a girl's curiosity and interest. 

She was merry and cheerful, and showed much innocent 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 225 

playfulness in her intercourse with her teacher. Her delight 
on recognising a favourite plaj^ellow and companion — herself 
a blind girl — who silently, and with an equal enjo;ynient of 
the coming surprise, took a seat beside her, was beautiful 
to witness. It elicited from her at first, as other slight cir- 
cumstances did twice or thrice during my visit, an uncouth 
noise which was rather painful to hear. But on her teacher 
touching her lips, she immediately desisted, and embraced 
her laughingly and affectionately. 

I had previously been into another chamber, where a 
number of blind boys were swinging, and climbing, and 
engaged in various sports. They all clamoured, as we 
entered, to the assistant-master, who accompanied us, " Look 
at me, Mr. Hart ! Please, Mr. Hart, look at me ! " evincing, 
I thought even in this, an anxiety peculiar to their condition, 
that their little feats of agility should be seen. Among 
them was a small laughing feUow, who stood aloof, enter- 
taining himself with a g}Tnnastic exercise for bringing the 
arms and chest into play; which he enjoyed mightily; espe- 
cially when, in thrusting out his right arm, he brought it 
into contact with another boy. Like Laura Bridgman, this 
young child was deaf, and dumb, and blind. 

Dr. Howe's account of this pupil's first instruction is so 
very striking, and so intimately connected with Laura herself, 
that I cannot refrain from a short extract. I may premise 
that the poor boy's name is Oliver CasweU ; that he is 
thirteen years of age ; and that he was in full possession of 
all his faculties, until three years and four months old. He 
was then attacked by scarlet fever : in four weeks became 
deaf ; in a few weeks more, blind ; in six months, dumb. 
He showed his anxious sense of this last deprivation, by often 
feeling the lips of other persons when they were talking, and 
then putting his hand upon his own, as if to assure himself 
that he had them in the right position. 

'' His thirst for knowledge," says Dr. Howe, " proclaimed 
itself as soon as he entered the house, by his eager exa- 
mination of everything he could feel or smell in his new 
location. For instance, treading upon the register of a 
furnace, he instantly stooped down, and began to feel it, and 
soon discovered the way in which the upper plate moved upon 
the lower one ; but this was not enough for him, so lying 
down upon his face, he applied his tongue first to one then to 



226 AMERICAN NOTES 

tlie other and seemed to discover that they were of different 
kiuds of metal. 

''His signs were expressive: and the strictly natural 
language, laughing, cryiug, sighing, kissing, embracing, &c., 
was perfect. 

" Some of the analogical signs which (guided by his faculty 
of imitation) he had contrived, were comprehensible ; such as 
the waving motion of his hand for the motion of a boat, the 
circular one for a wheel, &c. 

'' The first object was to break up the use of these signs 
and to substitute for them the use of purely arbitrary ones. 

'' Profiting by the experience I had gained in the other 
cases, I omitted several steps of the process before emplo^^ed, 
and commenced at once with the finger language. Taking 
therefore, several articles having short names, such as key, 
cup, mug, &c., and with Laura for an auxiliary, I sat down, 
and taking his hand, placed it upon one of them, and then 
with my own, made the letters key. He felt my hands 
eagerly with both of his, and on my repeating the process, he 
evidently tried to imitate the motions of my fingers. In a 
few minutes he contrived to feel the motions of my fingers 
with one hand, and holding out the other he tried to imitate 
them, laughing most heartily when he succeeded. Laura was 
by, interested even to agitation ; and the two presented a 
singular sight : her face was flushed and anxious, and her 
fingers twined in among ours so closely as to follow every 
motion, but so lightly as not to embarrass them ; while Oliver 
stood attentive, his head a little aside, his face turned up, his 
left hand grasping mine, and his right held out : at every 
motion of my fingers his countenance betokened keen atten- 
tion ; there was an expression of anxiety as he tried to imitate 
the motions ; then a smile came steitiing out as he thought 
he could do so, and spread into a joyous laugh the moment 
he succeeded, and felt me pat his head, and Laura clap 
him heartily upon the back, and jump up and doTVTO. in 
her joy. 

'' He learned more than a half dozen letters in half an hour, 
and seemed deliglited with his success, at least in gaining 
approbation. His attention then began to flag, and I 
commenced playing with him. It was evident that in all 
this he had merely been imitating the motions of my fingers, 
and placing his hand upon the key, cup, &c., as pai-t of the 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 227 

process, without any perception of the relation between the 
sign and the object. 

" When he was tired with play I took him back to the table, 
and he was quite ready to begin again his process of 
imitation. He soon learned to make the letters for key, pen, 
pin ; and by having the object repeatedly placed in his hand, 
he at last perceived the relation I wished to establish between 
them. This was evident, because, when I made the letters 
pin, ox p en, ov cup, he would select the article. 

" The perception of this relation was not accompanied by 
that radiant flash of intelligence, and that glow of joy, which 
marked the delightful moment when Laura first perceived it. 
I then placed all the articles on the table, and going away 
a little distance with the children, placed Oliver's fingers in 
the positions to spell liey, on which Laura went and brought 
the article : the little fellow seemed to be much amused by 
this, and looked very attentive and smiling. I then caused 
him to make the letters bread, and in an instant Laura went 
and brought him a piece : he smelled at it ; put it to his lips ; 
cocked up his head with a most knowing look ; seemed to reflect 
a moment ; and then laughed outright, as much as to say, ' Aha ! 
I understand now how something may be made out of this.' 

" It was now clear that he had the capacity and inclination 
to learn, that he was a proper subject for instruction, and 
needed only persevering attention. I therefore put him in 
the hands of an intelligent teacher, nothing doubting of his 
rapid progress." 

Well may this gentleman call that a delightftd moment, in 
which some distant promise of her present state first gleamed 
upon the darkened mind of Laura Bridgman. Throughout 
his life, the recollection of that moment will be to him a source 
of pure, unfading happiness ; nor will it shine least brightly 
on the evening of his days of Noble Usefulness. 

The afi"ection that exists between these two — the master and 
the pupil — is as far removed from all ordinary care and 
regard, as the circumstances in which it has had its growth, 
are apart from the common occurrences of life. He is 
occupied now, in devising means of imparting to her higher 
knowledge, and of conveying to her some adequate idea of 
the Great Creator of that universe in which, dark and silent 
and scentless though it be to her, she has such deep delio;ht 
and glad enjoyment. 



228 AMERICAN NOTES 

Ye wlio have eyes and see not, and have ears and hear 
not ; ye who are as the hypocrites of sad countenances, and 
disfigure your faces that ye may seem unto men to fast ; 
learn healthy cheerfulness, and mild contentment, from the 
deaf, and dumb, and blind ! Self-elected saints with gloomy 
brows, this sightless, earless, voiceless child may teach you 
lessons you vriYl do well to follow. Let that poor hand of 
hers lie gently on your hearts ; for there may be something in 
its healing touch akin to that of the Great Master whose 
precepts you misconstrue, whose lessons you pervert, of whose 
charity and sympathy with all the world, not one among you 
in his daily practice knows as much as many of the worst 
among those fallen sinners, to whom you are liberal in nothing 
but the preachment of perdition ! 

As I rose to quit the room, a pretty little child of one of the 
attendants came running in to greet its father. For the 
moment, a child with eyes, among the sightless crowd, 
impressed me almost as painfully as the blind boy in the 
porch had done, two hours ago. Ah ! how mucli brighter 
and more deeply blue, glowing and rich though it had been 
before, was the scene without, contrasting with the darkness 
of so many youthful lives within ! 



At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently 
adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are 
clustered together. One of these, is the State Hospital for 
the insane ; admirably conducted on those enlightened prin- 
cij)les of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago 
would have been worse than heretical, and which have been 
acted upon with so much success in our own pauper asylum at 
Han well. " Evince a desire to show some confidence, and 
repose some trust, even in mad people," — said the resident 
physician, as we walked along the galleries, his patients 
flocking round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or doubt 
the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its efi'ects, if there 
be such people stiU alive, I can only say that I hope I may 
never be summoned as a Jurpnan on a Commission of Lunacy 
whereof they are the subjects ; for I should certainly find 
them out of their senses, on such evidence alone. 

Each ward in this institution is shaped like a long gallery 
or hall, with the dormitories of the patients opening from it 
on either hand. Here they work, read, play at skittles, and 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATIOIT. 229 

otter games ; and when the weather does not admit of their 
taking exercise out of doors, pass the day together. In one 
of these rooms, seated, - calmly, and quite as a matter of 
course, among a throng of madwomen, black and white, were 
the physician's wife and another lady, with a couple of 
children. These ladies were graceful and handsome ; and it 
was not diihcult to perceive at a glance that even their 
presence there, had a highly beneficial influence on the 
patients who were grouped about them. 

Leaning her head against the chimney-piece, with a great 
assumption of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an 
elderly female, in as many scraps of finery as Madge Wildfire 
herself. Her head in particular was so strewn with scraps 
of gauze and cotton and bits of paper, and had so many 
queer odds and ends stuck all about it, that it looked like a 
bird^s-nest. She was radiant with imaginary jewels ; wore a 
rich pair of undoubted gold spectacles ; and gracefully dropped 
upon her lap, as we approached, a very old greasy newspaper, 
in which I dare say she had been reading an account of her 
own presentation at some Foreign Court. 

I have been thus particular in describing her, because 
she will serve to exemplify the physician's manner of acquiring 
and retaining the confidence of his patients. 

" This," he said aloud, taking me by the hand, and ad- 
vancing to the fantastic figure with great politeness — not 
raising her suspicions by the slightest look or whisper, or 
any kind of aside, to me : " This lady is the hostess of this 
mansion, sir. It belongs to her. Nobody else has anything 
whatever to do with it. It is a large establishment, as you 
see, and requires a great number of attendants. She lives, 
you observe, in the very first style. She is kind enough to 
receive my visits, and to permit my wife and family to reside 
here ; for which it is hardly necessary to say, we are much 
indebted to her. She is exceedingly courteous, you perceive," 
on this hint she bowed condescendingly, " and vril] permit 
me to have the pleasure of introducing you : a gentleman 
from England, Ma'am : newly arrived from England, after a 
very tempestuous passage : Mr. Dickens — the lady of the 
house ! '^ 

We exchanged the most dignified salutations with profound 
gravity and respect, and so went on. The rest of the mad- 
women seemed to understand the joke perfectly (not only in 



230 AMERICAN NOTES 

this case, but in all tlie otliers, except their own), and to he 
highly amused by it. The nature of their several kinds of 
insanity was made known to me in the same way, and we 
left each of them in high good humour. Not only is a 
thorough confidence established, by these means, between 
physician and patient, in respect of the nature and extent of 
their hallucinations, but it is easy to understand that oppor- 
tunities are afforded for seizing any moment of reason, to 
startle them by placing their own delusion before them in 
its most incongruous and ridiculous light. 

Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every 
day with a knife and fork ; and in the midst of them sits 
the gentleman, whose manner of dealing with his charges, 
I have just described. At every meal, moral influence 
alone restrains the more violent among them from cutting 
the throats of the rest ; but the effect of that influence is 
reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found, even as a 
means of restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure, 
a hundred times more efficacious than all the strait-waistcoats, 
fetters, and hand-cuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty 
have manufactured since the creation of the world. 

In the labour department, every patient is as freely trusted 
with the tools of his trade as if he were a sane man. In 
the garden, and on the farm, they work with spades, rakes, 
and hoes. For amusement, they walk, run, fish, paint, read, 
and ride out to take the air in carriages provided for the 
purpose. They have among themselves a sewing society to 
make clothes for the poor, which holds meetings, passes 
resolutions, never comes to fisty cuffs or bowie-knives as 
sane assemblies have been known to do elsewhere ; and 
conducts all its proceedings with the greatest decorum. The 
irritability, which woidd otherwise be expended on their own 
flesh, clothes, and furniture, is dissipated in these pursuits. 
They are cheerful, tranquil, and healthy. 

Once a week they have a ball, in which the Doctor and his 
family, with all the nurses and attendants, take an active part. 
Dances and marches are performed alternately, to the en- 
livening strains of a piano ; and now and then some gentleman 
or lady (whose proficiency has been previously ascertained) 
obliges the company with a song ; nor does it over degenerate, 
at a tender crisis, into a screech or howl ; wlierein, I must 
confess, I should have thought tlie danger lay. At an early 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 231 

hour they all meet together for these festive purposes; at 
eight o'clock refreshments are sersred ; and at nine they 
separate. 

Immense politeness and good-breeding are observed through- 
out. They all take their tone from the Doctor ; and he moves 
a very Chesterfield among the company. Like other assemblies, 
these entertainments afford a fruitful topic of conversation 
among the ladies for some days ; and the gentlemen are so 
anxious to shine on these occasions, that they have been 
sometimes found '.' practising their steps " in private, to cut a 
more distinguished figure in the dance. 

It is obvious that one great feature of this system, is the 
inculcation and encouragement, even among such unhappy 
persons, of a decent self-respect. Something of the same 
spirit pervades all the Institutions at South Boston. 

There is the House of Industry. In that branch of it, 
which is devoted to the reception of old or otherwise helpless 
paupers, these words are painted on the walls : ^' Wokthy 
OF Notice. Selp-Govehnment, Quietude, and Peace, 
ABE Blessings." It is not assumed and taken for granted 
that being there they must be evil-disposed and wicked people, 
before whose vicious eyes it is necessary to flourish threats 
and harsh restraints. They are met at the very threshold 
with this mild appeal. All within-doors is very plain and 
simple, as it ought to be, but arranged with a view to peace 
and comfort. It costs no more than any other plan of arrange- 
ment, but it bespeaks an amount of consideration for those 
who are reduced to seek a shelter there, which puts them at 
once upon their gratitude and good behaviour. Instead of 
being parcelled out in great, long, rambling wards, where a 
certain amount of weazen life may mope, and pine, and 
shiver, all day long, the building is divided into separate 
rooms, each with its share of light and air. In these, the 
better kind of paupers live. They have a motive for exertion 
and becoming pride, in the desire to make these little chambers 
comfortable and decent. I do not remember one but it was 
clean and neat, and had its plant or two upon the window-sill, 
or row of crockery upon the shelf, or small display of coloured 
prints upon the white-washed wall, or, perhaps, its wooden 
clock behind the door. 

The orphans and young children are in an adjoining 
building j separate from this, but a part of the same Insti- 



232 AMERICAN NOTES 

tution. Some are such little creatures, that the stairs are o£ 
lilliputian measurement, fitted to their tiny strides. The same 
consideration for their years and weakness is expressed in 
their very seats, which are perfect curiosities, and look like 
articles of furniture for a pauper doll's-house. I can imagine 
the glee of our Poor Law Commissioners at the notion of these 
seats having arms and backs ; but small spines being of older 
date than their occupation of the Board-room at Somerset 
House, I thought even this provision very merciful and kind. 

Here again, I was greatly pleased with the inscriptions on 
the wall, which were scraps of plain morality, easily remem- 
bered and imderstood : such as " Love one another " — '' God 
remembers the smallest creature in his creation : " and straight- 
forward advice of that nature. The books and tasks of these 
smallest of scholars, were adapted, in the same judicious 
manner, to their childish powers. When we had examined 
these lessons, four morsels of girls (of whom one was blind) 
sang a little song, about the merry month of May, which I 
thought (being extremely dismal) would have suited an English 
November better. That done, we went to see their sleeping- 
rooms on the floor above, in which the arrangements were no 
less excellent and gentle than those we had seen below. And 
after observing that the teachers were of a class and character 
well suited to the spirit of the place, I took leave of the infants 
with a lighter heart than ever I have taken leave of pauper 
infants yet. 

Connected with the House of Industry, there is also an 
Hospital, which was in the best order, and had, I am glad to 
say, many beds unoccupied. It had one fault, however, which 
is common to all American interiors : the presence of the 
eternal, accursed, sujffocating, red-hot demon of a stove, whose 
breath would blight the purest air under Heaven. 

There are two establishments for boys in this same neigh- 
bourliood. One is called the Boylston school, and is an 
asylum for neglected and indigent boj-s who have committed 
no crime, but who in the ordinary course of things would 
very soon be purged of that distinction if tliey were not taken 
from the hungry streets and sent here. The other is a House 
of Reformation for Juvenile Offenders. They are both under 
tlie same roof, but the two classes of boys never come in 
contact. 

The Boylston boys, as may be readily supposed, have very 



FOE GENERAL CIRCULATION". 233 

much, tlie advantage of tlie others in point of personal appear- 
ance. They were in their school-room when I came upon 
them, and answered correctly, without book, such questions as 
where was England; how far was it; what was its population; 
its capital citj' ; its form of government ; and so forth. Tliey 
sang a song too, about a farmer sowing his seed : with corre- 
sponding action at such parts as "'tis thus he sows," "he 
turns him round," *'he claps his hands;" which gave it 
greater interest for them, and accustomed them to act together, 
in an orderly manner. They appeared exceedingly well taught, 
and not better taught than fed ; for a more chubby-looking 
full-waistcoated set of boys, I never saw. 

The juvenile offenders had not such pleasant faces by a 
great deal, and in this establishment there were many boys 
of colour. I saw them first at their work (basket-making, 
and the manufacture of palm-leaf hats), afterwards in their 
school, where they sang a chorus in praise of Liberty : an 
odd, and, one would think, rather aggravating, theme for 
prisoners. These boys were divided into four classes, each 
denoted by a numeral, worn on a badge upon the arm. On 
the arrival of a newcomer, he is put into the fourth or lowest 
class, and left, by good behaviour, to work his way up into 
the first. The design and object of this Institution is to 
reclaim the youthful criminal by firm but kind and judicious 
treatment ; to make his prison a place of purification 
and improvement, not of demoralisation and corruption ; to 
impress upon him that there is but one path, and that one 
sober industry, which can ever lead him to happiness ; to teach 
him how it may be trodden, if his footsteps have never yet 
been led that way ; and to lure him back to it if they have 
strayed : in a word, to snatch him from destruction, and 
restore him to society a penitent and useful member. The 
importance of such an establishment, in every point of view, 
and with reference to every consideration of humanity and social 
policy, requires no comment. 

One other establishment closes the catalogue. It is the 
House of Correction for the State, in which silence is strictly 
maintained, but where the prisoners have the comfort and 
mental relief of seeing each other, and of working together. 
This is the improved system of Prison Discipline wliich we 
have imported into England, and which has been in successful 
operation among us for some years past. 



234 AMERICAN NOTES 

America, as a new and not over-populated country, lias in 
all her prisons, the one great advantage, of being enabled to 
find useful and profitable work for the inmates: whereas, with 
us, the prejudice against prison labour is naturally very strong, 
and almost insurmountable, when honest men, who have not 
offended against the laws, are frequently doomed to seek 
employment in vain. Even in the United States, the principle 
of bringing convict labour and free labour into a competition 
which must obviously be to the disadvantage of the latter, has 
already found many opponents, whose number is not likely to 
diminish with access of years. 

For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem 
at the first glance to be better conducted than those of America. 
The treadmill is accompanied with little or no noise ; five 
hundred men may pick oakum in the same room, without a 
sound: and both kinds of labour admit of such keen and 
vigilant superintendance, as will render even a word of personal 
communication among the prisoners almost impossible. On 
the other hand, the noise of the loom, the forge, the carpenter's 
hammer, or the stone-mason's saw, greatly favour those 
opportunities of intercourse — hurried and brief no doubt, but 
opportunities still — which these several kinds of work, by 
rendering it necessary for men to be employed very near to 
each other, and often side by side, without any barrier or par- 
tition between them, in their very nature present. A visitor, 
too, requires to reason and reflect a little, before the sight of 
a number of men engaged in ordinary labour, such as he is 
accustomed to out of doors, will impress him half as strongly 
as the contemplation of the same persons in the same place and 
garb would, if they were occupied in some task, marked and 
degraded everywhere as belonging only to felons in jails. In 
an American state prison or house of correction, I found it diffi- 
cult at first to persuade myself that I was really in a jail : a 
place of ignominious punishment and endurance. And to this 
hour I very much question whether the humane boast that it 
is not like one, has its root in the true wisdom or philosophy 
of the matter. 

I hope I may not be misunderstood on this subject, for it is 
one in which I take a strong and deep interest. I incline as 
little to the sicldy feeling which makes every canting lie or 
maudlin speech of a notorious criuiinal a subject of newspaper 
report and general sympathy, as I do to those good old customa 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION". 235 

of ihe good old times which made England, even so recently 
as in the reign of the Third King George, in respect of her 
criminal code and her prison regulations, one of the most 
bloody-minded and barbarous countries on the earth. If I 
thought it would do any good to the rising generation, I 
would cheerfully give my consent to the disinterment of the 
bones of any genteel highwayman (the more genteel, the more 
cheerfully), and to their exposure, piece-meal, on any sign- 
post, gate, or gibbet, that might be deemed a good elevation 
for the purpose. My reason is as well convinced that these 
gentry were utterly worthless and debauched villains, as it is 
that the laws and jails hardened them in their evil courses, or 
that their wonderful escapes were effected by the prison- 
turnkeys who, in those admirable days, had always been felons 
themselves, and were, to the last, their bosom-friends and 
pot -companions. At the same time I know, as all men do or 
should, that the subject of Prison Discipline is one of the 
highest importance to any community ; and that in her sweep- 
ing reform and bright example to other countries on this head, 
America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence and 
exalted policy. In contrasting her system with that which 
we have modelled upon it, I merely seek to show that with 
all its drawbacks, ours has some advantages of its own.^' 

The House of Correction which has led to these remarks, is 
not walled, like other prisons, but is palisaded round about 
with tall rough stakes, something after the manner of an 
enclosure for keeping elephants in, as we see it represented 
in Eastern prints and pictui^es. The prisoners wear a parti- 
coloured dress ; and those who are sentenced to hard labour, 
work at nail-making or stone-cutting. When I was there, 
the latter class of labourers were employed upon the stone for 
a new custom-house in course of erection at Boston, They 
appeared to shape it skilfully and with expedition, though 

* Apart from profit made by the useful labour of prisoners which we can 
never hope to realise to any great extent, and which it is perhaps not expedient 
for us to try to gain, there are two prisons in London, in all respects equal, 
and in some decidedly superior, to any I saw or have ever heard or read of 
in America. One is the Tothill Fields Bridewell, conducted by Lieutenant 
A. F. Tracey, R.N. ; the other the Middlesex House of Correction, superiu- 
tended by Mr. Chesterton. This gentleman also holds an appointment in the 
Public Seiwice. Both are enlightened and superior men : and it would be as 
difficult to find persons better qualified for the functions they discharge with 
firmness, zeal, intelligence, and humanity, as it would be to exceed the perfect 
order and arrangement of the institutions they goveni. 



236 AMERICAN NOTES 

there were very few among them (if any) who had not acquired 

the art within the prison gates. 

The women, all in one large room, were employed in 
making light clothing, for New Orleans and the Southern 
States. They did their work in silence, like the men ; and 
like them, were overlooked by the person contracting for their 
labour, or by some agent of his appointment. In addition to 
this, they are every moment liable to be visited by the prison 
officers appointed for that purpose. 

The arrangements for cooking, washing of clothes, and so 
forth, are much upon the plan of those I have seen at home. 
Their mode of bestowing the prisoners at night (which is of 
general adoption) differs from ours, and is both simple and 
effective. In the centre of a lofty area, lighted by windows 
in the four walls, are five tiers of cells, one above the other ; 
each tier having before it a light iron gallery, attainable by 
stairs of the same construction and material : excepting the 
lower one, which is on the ground. Behind these, back 
to back with them and facing the opposite wall, are five 
corresponding rows of cells, accessible by similar means : so 
that supposing the prisoners locked up in their cells, an officer 
stationed on the ground, with his back to the wall, has half 
their number under his eye at once ; the remaining half being 
equally under the observation of another officer on the opposite 
side ; and all in one great apartment. Unless this watch be 
corrupted or sleeping on his post, it is impossible for a man to 
escape ; for even in the event of his forcing the iron door of 
his cell without noise (which is exceedingly improbable), the 
moment he appears outside, and steps into that one of the 
five galleries on which it is situated, he must be plainly and 
fully visible to the officer below. Each of these cells holds a 
small truckle-bed, in which one prisoner sleeps ; never more. 
It is small, of course; and the door being not solid, but 
grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner within is 
at all times exposed to the observation and inspection of any 
guard who may pass along that tier at any hour or minute of 
the night. Every day, the prisoners receive their dinner, 
singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall ; and each man 
carries his to his sleeping ceU to eat it, where he is locked up, 
alone, for that pur2)ose, one hour. The wliole of this arrnnge- 
ment struck me as being admirable ; and I hope that the next 
new prison w s erect in Eughuid may be built on this plan. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 237 

I was given to understand that in this prison no swords or 
fire-arms, or even cudgels, are kept ; nor is it probable that, 
so long as its present excellent management continues, any 
weapon, offensive or defensive, will ever be required within 
its bounds. 

Such are the Institutions at South Boston ! In all of 
them, the unfortunate or degenerate citizens of the State are 
carefully instructed in their duties both to God and man ; are 
surrounded by all reasonable means of comfort and happiness 
that their condition will admit of; are appealed to, as mem- 
bers of the great human family, however afflicted, indigent, 
or fallen ; are ruled by the strong Heart, and not by the 
strong (though immeasurably weaker) Hand. I have described 
them at some length : firstly, because their worth demanded 
it ; and secondly, because I mean to take them for a model, 
and to content myself with saying of others we may come to, 
whose design and purpose are the same, that in this or that 
respect they practically fail, or differ. 

I wish by this account of them, imperfect in its execution, 
but, in its just intention, honest, I could hope to convey to 
my readers one hundredth part of the gratification, the sights 
I have described afforded me. 



To an Englishman, accustomed to the paraphernalia of 
"Westminster Hall, an American Court of Law is as odd a 
sight as, I suppose, an English Court of Law would be to an 
American. Except in the Supreme Court at Washington 
(where the judges wear a plain black robe), there is no such 
thing as a wig or gown connected with the administration of 
justice. The gentlemen of the bar being barristers and 
attorneys too (for there is no division of those functions as in 
England) are no more removed from their clients than attor- 
neys in our Court for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors are from 
theirs. The jury are quite at home, and make themselves as 
comfortable as circumstances will permit. The witness is so 
little elevated above, or put aloof from, the crowd in the 
court, that a stranger entering during a pause in the proceed- 
ings would find it difficult to pick him out from the rest. 
And if it chanced to be a criminal trial, his eyes, in nine 
cases out of ten, would wander to the dock in search of the 
prisoner in vain ; for that gentleman would most likely be 
lounging among the most distinguished ornaments of the 



238 AMERICAN NOTES 

legal profession, whispering suggestions in his counsel's ear 
or making a toothpick out of an okl quill with his penknife. 

I could not but notice these differences when I visited the 
courts at Boston. I was much surprised at first, too, to 
observe that the counsel who interrogated the witness under 
examination at the time did so sitting. But seeing that he 
was also occupied in writing down the answers, and remem- 
bering that he was alone and had no '^ junior," I quickly- 
consoled myself with the reflection that law was not quite so 
expensive an article here as at home ; and that the absence of 
sundry formalities which we regard as indispensable, had 
doubtless a very favourable influence upon the bill of costs. 

In every court ample and commodious provision is made 
for the accommodation of the citizens. This is the case all 
through America. In every Public Institution, the right of 
the people to attend, and to have an interest in the proceed- 
ings, is most fully and distinctly recognised. There are no 
grim door-keepers to dole out their tardy civility by the six- 
pennyworth ; nor is there, I sincerely believe, any insolence 
of office of any kind. Nothing national is exhibited for 
money ; and no public officer is a showman. We have begun 
of late years to imitate this good example. I hope we shall 
continue to do so ; and that, in the fulness of time, even 
deans and ♦chapters may be converted. 

In the civil court an action was trying for damages sus- 
tained in some accident upon a railway, The witnesses had 
been examined, and counsel was addressing the jury. The 
learned gentleman (like a few of his English brethren) was 
desperately long-winded, and had a remarkable capacity of 
saying the same thing over and over again. His great theme 
was " Warren the engine driver," whom he pressed into the 
service of every sentence he uttered. I listened to him for 
about a quarter of an hour ; and, coming out of court at the 
expiration of that time, without the faintest ray of enligliten- 
ment as to the merits of the case, felt as if I were at home 
again. 

In the prisoners' cell, waiting to be examined by the 
magistrate on a charge of theft, was a boy. This lad, instead 
of being committed to a common jail, would be sent to the 
asylum at Sou"^!! Boston, and there taught a trade ; and in the 
course of time he would be bound apprentice to some respect- 
able master. Thus his detection in this offence, instead of 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 239 

being the prelude to a life of infamy and a miserable death, 
would lead, there was a reasonable hope, to his being re- 
claimed from vice, and becoming a worthy member of society. 
I am by no means a wholesale admirer of our legal 
solemnities, many of which impress me as being exceedingly 
ludicrous. Strange as it may seem, too, there is undoubtedly 
a degree of protection in the wig and gown — a dismissal of 
individual responsibility in dressing for the part — which 
encourages that insolent bearing and language, and that 
gross perversion of the office of a pleader for The Truth, so 
frecj_uent in our courts of law. Still, I cannot help doubting 
whether America, in her desire to shake off the absurdities 
and abuses of the old system, may not have gone too far into 
the opposite extreme; and whether it is not desirable, 
especially in the small community of a city like this, where 
each man knows the other, to surround the administration of 
justice with some artificial barriers against the ''Hail fellow, 
well met " deportment of every-day life. All the aid it can 
have in the very high character and ability of the Bench, not 
only here but elsewhere, it has, and well deserves to have ; 
but it may need something more : not to impress the thought- 
ful and the well-informed, but the ignorant and heedless; a 
class which includes some prisoners and many witnesses. 
These institutions were established, no doubt, upon the prin- 
ciple that those who had so large a share in making the laws, 
would certainly respect them. But experience has proved 
this hope to be fallacious ; for no men know better than the 
judges of America, that on the occasion of any great popular 
excitement the law is powerless, and cannot, for the time, 
assert its own supremacy. 

The . tone of society in Boston is one of perfect politeness, 
courtesy, and good breeding. The ladies are unquestionably 
very beautiful — in face : but there I am compelled to stop. 
Their education is much as with us ; neither better nor worse. 
I had heard some very marvellous stories in this respect ; but 
not believing them, was not disappointed. Blue ladies there 
are, in Boston ; but like philosophers of that colour and sex 
in most other latitudes, they rather desire to be thought 
superior than to be so. Evangelical ladies there are, like- 
wise, whose attachment to the forms of religion, and horror 
of theatrical entertainments, are most exemplary. Ladies 
who have a passion for attending lectures are to be found 



240 AMERICAN NOTES 

among all classes and all conditions. In tlie kind of provincial 
life wliicli prevails in cities such as tliis, the Pulpit has great 
influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New 
England (always excepting the Unitarian ministry) would 
appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational 
amusements. The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, 
are the only means of excitement excepted; and to the 
church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, the ladies resort ia 
crowds. 

Wherever religion is resorted to, as a strong drink, and as 
an escape from the dull monotonous round of homt., those of 
its ministers who pepper the highest will be the surest to 
please. They who strew the Eternal Path with the greatest 
amount of brimstone, and who most ruthlessly tread down the 
flowers and leaves that grow by the way-side, will be voted the 
most righteous ; and they who enlarge with the greatest per- 
tinacity on the difficulty of getting into heaven, will be con- 
sidered by all true believers certain of going there : though it 
would be hard to say by what process of reasoning thia 
conclusion is arrived at. It is so at home, and it is so abroad. 
With regard to the other means of excitement, the Lecture, it 
has at least the merit of being always new. One lecture treads 
so quickly on the heels of another, that none are remembered ; 
and the course of this month may be safely repeated next, 
with its charm of novelty imbroken, and its interest unabated. 

The fruits of the earth have their growth in corruption. 
Out of the rottenness of these things, there has sprung up in 
Boston a sect of philosophers known as Transcendentalists. 
On inquiring what this appellation might be supposed to 
signify, I was given to understand that whatever was unintel- 
ligible would be certainly transcendental. Not deriving much 
comfort from this elucidation, I pursued the inquiry still 
further, and found that tlie Transcendentalists are followers of 
my friend Mr. Carlyle, or I should rather say, of a follower of 
his, Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson. This gentleman has written 
a volume of Essays, in which, among much that is dreamy 
and fanciful (if he will pardon me for saying so) there is much 
more that is true and manly, honest and bold. Transcen- 
dentalism has its occasional vagaries (what school has not ?) 
but it has good healthful qualities in spite of them ; not least 
among the number a hearty disgust of Cant, and an a|>titude 
to detect her in all the million varieties of her everlasting 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATIOIT. 241 

wardrobe. And therefore if I were a Bostonlan, I tliiak I 
would be a Transcendentalist. 

The only preacher I heard in Boston was Mr. Taylor, who 
addresses himself peculiarly to seamen, and who was once a 
mariner himself. I found his chapel down among the 
shipping, in one of the narrow, old, water-side streets, with a 
gay blue flag waving freely from its roof. In the gallery opposite 
to the pulpit were a little choir of male and female singers, a 
violoncello, and a violin. The preacher already sat in the 
pulpit, which was raised on pillars, and ornamented behind 
him with painted drapery of a lively and somewhat theatrical 
appearance. He looked a weather-beaten hard-featured man, 
of about six or eight and fifty ; with deep lines graven as it 
were into his face, dark hair, and a stern, keen eye. Yet 
the general character of his countenance was pleasant and 
agreeable. 

The service commenced with a hymn, to which succeeded an 
extemporary prayer. It had the fault of frequent repetition, 
incidental to all such prayers ; but it was plain and compre- 
hensive in its doctrines, and breathed a tone of general 
S}Tnpathy and charity, which is not so commonly a character- 
istic of this form of address to the Deity as it might be. That 
done he opened his discourse, taking for his text a passage 
from the Song of Solomon, laid upon the desk before the 
commencement of the service by some unknown member of the 
acongregation : ^' Who is this coming up from the wilderness, 
leaning on the arm of her beloved ! " 

He handled his text in all kinds of ways, and twisted it into 
all manner of shapes ; but always ingeniousl}'-, and with a rude 
eloquence, well-adapted to the comprehension of his hearers. 
Indeed if I be not mistaken, he studied their sympathies and 
understandings much more than the display of his own powers. 
His imagery was all drawn from the sea, and from the 
incidents of a seaman's life ; and was often remarkably good. 
He spoke to them of '' that glorious man. Lord Nelson," and 
of Colling wood ; and drew nothing in, as the saying is, by the 
head and shoulders, but brought it to bear upon his purpose, 
naturally, and with a sharp mind to its effect. Sometimes, 
when much excited with his subject, he had an odd way — com- 
pounded of John Bunyan, and Balfour of Burley — of taking 
his great quarto bible under his arm and pacing up and down 
the pulpit with it ; looking steadily down, meantime, into the 



242 AMERICAN NOTES 

midst of the congregation. Thus, when he applied his text 
to the first assemblage of his hearers, and pictured the wonder 
of the church at their presumption in forming a congregation 
among themselves, he stopped short with his bible under his 
arm in the manner I have described, and pursued his dis- 
course after this manner: 

''Who. are these — who are they — who are these fellows? 
where do they come from ? Where are they going to ? — 
Come fi'om! What's the answer?" — leaning out of the 
pulpit, and pointing downward with his right hand : '' From 
below I " — starting back again, and looking at the sailors 
before him : " From below, my brethren. From under the 
hatches of sin, battened down above you by the evil one. 
That 's where you came from ! " — a walk up and down the 
pulpit : " and where are you going " — stopping abruptly : 
" where are you going ? Aloft ! " — very softly, and pointing 
upward: ''Aloft !"— louder: " aloft ! "—louder still : "That's 
where you are going — with a fair wind, — all taut and trim, 
steering direct for Heaven in its glory, where there are no 
storms or foul weather, and where the wicked cease from 
troubling, and the weary are at rest." — Another walk : "That 's 
where you 're going to, my friends. That 's it. That 's the 
place. That 's the port. That 's the haven. It 's a blessed 
harbour — still water there, in all changes of the winds and 
tides ; no driving ashore upon the rocks, or slipping your 
cables and running out to sea, there : Peace — Peace — Peace — 
all peace ! " — Another walk, and patting the bible under his 
left arm : " What ! These fellows are coming from the wilder- 
ness, are they ? Yes. From the dreary, blighted wilderness 
of Iniquity, whose only crop is Death. But do they lean upon 
anything — do they lean upon nothing, these poor seamen ? '* 
— Three raps upon the bible : " Oh yes. — Yes. — They lean 
upon the arm of their Beloved " — three more raps : " upon 
the arm of their Beloved " — three more, and a walk : " Pilot, 
guiding-star, and compass, all in one, to all hands — here it is" 
— three more : " Here it is. They can do their seaman's duty 
manfully, and be easy in their minds in the utmost peril and 
danger, with this " — two more : " They can come, even these 
poor fellows can come, fi'om the wilderness leaning on the arm 
of their Beloved, and go up — up — up ! " — raising his hand 
higher, and higher, at every repetition of the word, so that he 
stood with it at last stretched above his head, regarding them 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 243 

in a strange, rapt manner, and pressing the book triumphantly 
to his breast, until he gradually subsided into some other 
portion of liis discourse. 

I have cited this, rather as an instance of the preacher's 
eccentricities than his merits, though taken in connection with 
his look and manner, and the character of his audience, even 
this "was striking. It is possible, however, that my favour- 
able impression of him may have been greatly influenced and 
strengthened, firstly, by his impressing upon his hearers that 
the true observance of religion was not inconsistent with a 
cheerfid deportment and an exact discharge of the duties of 
their station, which, indeed, it scrupulously required of them; 
and secondly, by his cautioning them not to set up any 
monopoly in Paradise and its mercies. I never heard these 
two points so wisely touched (if indeed I have ever heard 
them touched at all), by any preacher of that kind, before. 

Having passed the time I spent in Boston, in making 
myself acquainted with these things, in settling the course I 
should take in my future travels, and in mixing constantly 
with its society, I am not aware that I have any occasion to 
prolong this chapter. Such of its social customs as I have 
not mentioned, however, may be told in a very few words. 

The usual dinner-hour is two o'clock. A dinner party 
takes place at five ; and at an evening party, they seldom sup 
later than eleven ; so that it goes hard but one gets home, 
even from a rout, by midnight. I never could find out any 
dijfference between a party at Boston and a party in London, 
saving that at the former place all assemblies are held at 
more rational hours ; that the conversation may possibly be a 
little louder and more cheerful ; that a guest is usually 
expected to ascend to the very top of the house to take his 
cloak off; that he is certain to see, at every dinner, an 
unusual amount of poultry on the table ; and at every supper, 
at least two mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters, in any one of 
which a half-grown Duke of Clarence might be smothered 
easily. 

There are two theatres in Boston, of good size and con- 
struction, but sadly in want of patronage. The few ladies 
who resort to them, sit, as of right, in the front rows of the 
boxes. 

The bar is a large room with a stone floor, and there people 
stand and smoke, and lounge about, all the evening : dropping 

b2 



244 AMERICAN NOTES 

in and out as tlie Lumour takes them. There too the stranger 
is initiated into the mj^steries of Gin-sling, Cocktail, Sangaree, 
Mint Julep, Sherry-cobbler, Timber Doodle, and other rare 
drinks. The House is full of boarders, both married and 
single, many of whom sleep upon the premises, and contract 
by the week for their board and lodging : the charge for 
■which diminishes as they go nearer the sky to roost. A 
public table is laid in a very handsome hall for breakfast, and 
for dinner, and for supper. The party sitting down together 
to these meals will vary in number from one to two hundred : 
sometimes more. The advent of each of these epochs in the 
day is proclaimed by an awful gong, which shakes the very 
window frames as it reverberates through the house, and 
horribly distui'bs nervous foreigners. There is an ordinary 
for ladies, and an ordinary for gentlemen. 

In our private room the cloth could not, for any earthly 
consideration, have been laid for dinner without a huge glass 
dish of cranberries in the middle of the table ; and breakfast 
would have been no breakfast unless the principal dish were 
a deformed beef-steak with a great flat bone in the centre, 
swimming in hot butter, and sprinlded with the very blackest 
of all possible pepper. Our bedroom was spacious and airy, 
but (like every bedroom on this side of the Atlantic) very 
bare of fiu-niture, having no curtains to the French bedstead 
or to the window. It had one unusual luxury, however, in 
the shape of a wardrobe of painted wood, something smaller 
than an English watch-box : or if this comparison should be 
insufficient to convey a just idea of its dimensions, they may 
be estimated from the fact of my having lived for fourteen 
days and nights in the firm belief that it was a shower- 
bath. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 245 



CHAPTER IV. 

AK AMERICAN RAILROAD. LOWELL AND ITS FACTORY SYSTEM. 

Before leaving Boston, I devoted one day to an excursion 
to Lowell. I assign a separate chapter to this visit ; not 
because I am about to describe it at any great length, but 
because I remember it as a thing by itself, and am desirous 
that my readers should do the same. 

I made acquaintance with an American railroad, on this 
occasion, for the first time. As these works are pretty much 
alike all through the States, their general characteristics are 
easily described. 

There are no first and second class carriages as with us ; 
but there is a gentleman's car and a ladies' car : the main 
distinction between which is that in the first, everybody 
smokes ; and in the second, nobody does. As a black man 
never travels with a white one, there is also a negro car ; 
which is a great blundering clumsy chest, such as Gulliver 
put to sea in, from the kingdom of Brobdingnag. There is a 
great deal of jolting, a great deal of noise, a great deal of wall, 
not much window, a locomotive engine, a shriek, and a bell. 

The cars are like shabby omnibuses, but larger : holding 
thirt}^, forty, fifty, people. The seats, instead of stretching 
from end to end, are placed crosswise. Each seat holds two 
persons. There is a long row of them on each side of the 
caravan, a narrow passage up the middle, and a door at both 
ends. In the centre of the carriage there is usually a stove, 
fed with charcoal or anthracite coal ; which is for the most 
part red-hot. It is insufferably close ; and you see the hot 
air fiuttering between j'-ourself and any other object you may 
happen to look at, like the ghost of smoke. 

In the ladies' car, there are a great many gentlemen 
who have ladies with them. There are also a great many 
ladies who have nobody with them : for any lady may travel 
alone, from one end of the United States to the other, and be 



246 AMERICAN NOTES 

certain of the most courteous and considerate treatment 
everywhere. The conductor or check-taker, or guard, or 
whatever he may be, wears no uniform. He walks up and 
down the car, and in and out of it, as his fancy dictates ; 
leans against the door with his hands in his pockets and stares 
at you, if you chance to be a stranger ; or enters into con- 
versation with the passengers about him. A great many 
newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. 
Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. 
If you are an Englishman, he expects that that railroad is 
pretty much like an English raihoad. If you say '* No," he 
says *' Yes ? " (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they 
differ. You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, 
and he says ''Yes?" (still interrogatively) to each. Theu he 
guesses that you don't travel faster in England ; and on your 
replying that you do, says *'Yes?" again (still interroga- 
tively), and, it is quite evident, don't believe it. After a 
long pause he remarks, partly to you, and partly to the knob 
on the top of his stick, that '' Yankees are reckoned to be 
considerable of a go-ahead people too ; " upon which you say 
*'Yes," and then he says *'Yes" again (affirmatively this 
time) ; and upon your looking out of window, tells you that 
behind that hill, and some three miles from the next station, 
there is a clever town, in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects 
you have con-eluded to stop. Your answer in the negative 
naturallj'- leads to more questions in reference to your intended 
route (always pronounced rout) ; and wherever you are going, 
you invariably learn that you can't get there without immense 
difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are some- 
where else. 

If a lady take a fancy to any male passenger's seat, the 
gentleman who accompanies her gives him notice of the fact, 
and he immediately vacates it with great politeness. Politics 
are much discussed, so are banks, so is cotton. Quiet people 
avoid the question of the Presidency, for tliere will be a new 
election in three j'ears and a half, and party feeling runs very 
high : tlie great constitutional feature of this institution being, 
that directly the acrimony of the last election is over, the 
acrimony of tlie next one begins ; which is an unspeal^able 
comfort to all strong politicians and true lovers of their 
country : tluit is to sa}', to ninety-nine men and boys out of 
every iiinety-nine and a quarter. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 247 

Except wlien a branch, road joins the main one, there is 
seldom more than one track of rails ; so that the road is very 
narrow, and the view, where there is a deep cutting, by no 
means extensive. When there is not, the character of the 
scenery is always the same. Mile after mile of stunted trees : 
some hewn down by the axe, some blown down by the wind, 
some half fallen and resting on their neighbours, many mere 
logs half hidden in the swamp, others mouldered away to 
spongy chips. The very soil of the earth is made up of 
minute fragments such as these ; each pool of stagnant water 
has its crust of vegetable rottenness ; on every side there are 
the boughs, and trunks, and stumps of trees, in every possible 
stage of decay, decomposition, and neglect. Now you emerge 
for a few brief minutes on an open country, glittering with 
some bright lake or pool, broad as many an English river, 
but so small here that it scarcely has a name ; now catch 
hasty glimpses of a distant town, with its clean white 
houses and their cool piazzas, its prim New England chiu'ch 
and school-house ; when whir-r-r-r ! almost before you have 
seen them, comes the same dark screen : the stunted trees, 
the stumps, the logs, the stagnant water — all so like the 
last that you seem to have been transported back again by 
magic. 

The train calls at stations in the woods, where the wild 
impossibility of anybody having the smallest reason to get 
out, is only to be equalled by the apparently desperate hope- 
lessness of there being anybody to get in. It rushes across 
the tui'npike road, where there is no gate, no policeman, no 
signal : nothing but a rough wooden arch, on which is painted 
" Whe]s: the bell rings, look out fok the Locomotive." 
On it whirls headlong, dives through the woods again, emerges 
in the light, clatters over frail arches, rumbles upon the 
heavy ground, shoots beneath a wooden bridge which inter- 
cepts the light for a second like a wink, suddenly awakens 
all the slumbering echoes in the main street of a large town, 
and dashes on haphazard, pell-mell, neck or nothing, down 
the middle of the road. There — with mechanics working at 
their trades, and people leaning from their doors and windows, 
and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, 
and women talking, and children crawling, and pigs burro win o-, 
and unaccustomed horses plunging and rearing, close to the 
very rails — there— on, on, on — tears the mad dragon of an 



248 AMERICAN NOTES 

engine witb. its train of cars ; scattering in all directions a 
sliower of burning sparks from its wood fire ; screeching, 
hissing, yelling, panting ; until at last the thirsty monster 
stops beneath a covered way to drink, the people cluster round, 
and you have time to breathe again. 

I was met at the station at Lowell by a gentleman inti- 
mately connected with the management of the factories there ; 
a.nd gladly putting myself under his guidance, drove off at 
once to that quarter of the town in which the works, the 
object of my visit, were situated. Although only just of age 
— for if my recollection serve me, it has been a manufacturing 
town barely one-and-twenty years — Lowell is a large, popu- 
lous, thriving place. Those indications of its youth which 
first attract the eye, give it a quaintness and oddity of cha- 
racter which, to a visitor from the old country, is amusing 
enough. It was a very dirty winter's day, and nothing in the 
whole town looked old to me, except the mud, which in some 
parts was almost knee-deep, and might have been deposited 
there, on the subsiding of the waters after the Deluge. In 
one place, there was a new wooden church, which, having no 
steeple, and being yet unpainted, looked like an enormous 
packing-case without any direction upon it. In another there 
was a large hotel, whose walls and colonnades were so crisp, 
and thin, and slight, that it had exactly the appearance of 
being built with cards. I was careful not to draw my breatli 
as we passed, and trembled when I saw a workman come out 
upon tlie roof, lest with one thoughtless stamp of his foot he 
should crush the structure beneath him, and bring it rattling 
down. The very river that moves the machinery in the mills 
(for they are all worked by water power), seems to acquire a 
new character from the fresh buildings of bright red brick 
and painted wood among which it takes its course ; and to be 
as liglit-headed, thoughtless, and brisk a yoimg river, in its 
murinuriugs and tumblings, as one would desire to see. One 
would swear that every *' Bakery," " Grocery," and " Book- 
bindery," and other kind of store, took its sluitters down for 
the first time, and started in business yesterday. Tlie golden 
pestles and mortars fixed as signs upon the sun-blind I'rames 
outside the Druggists', appear to have been just turned out of 
the United States* Mint; and Avhen I saw a baby of some 
week or ten days old in a woman's arms at a street corner, I 
found myself unconsciously wondering where it came li'oni : 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 249 

never supposing for an instant that it could have been born in 
such a young town as that. 

There are several factories in Lowell, each of which belongs 
to what we should term a Company of Proprietors, but what 
they call in America a Corporation. I went over several of 
these ; such as a woollen factory, a carpet factory, and a cotton 
factory : examined them in every part ; and saw them in their 
ordinary working aspect, with no preparation of any kind, or 
departure from their ordinary every-day proceedings. I may 
add that I am well acquainted with our manufacturing towns 
in England, and have visited many mills in Manchester and 
elsewhere in the same manner. 

I happened to arrive at the first factory just as the dinner 
hour was over, and the girls were returning to their work ; 
indeed the stairs of the mill were thronged with them as I 
ascended. They were all well-dressed, but not to my thinking 
above their condition : for I like to see the humbler classes of 
society careful of their dress and appearance, and even, if 
they please, decorated with such little trinkets as come within 
the compass of their means. Supposing it confined within 
reasonable limits, I would always encoiu^age this kind of 
pride, as a worthy element of self-respect, in any person I 
employed; and should no more be deterred from doing so, 
because some ^'retched female referred her fall to a love of 
dress, than I would allow my construction of the real intent 
and meaning of the Sabbath to be influenced by any warning 
to the well-disposed, founded on his backslidings on that 
particular day, which might emanate from the rather doubtful 
authority of a murderer in Newgate. 

These girls, as I have said, were all well dressed : and that 
phrase necessarily includes extreme cleanliness. They had 
serviceable bonnets, good warm cloaks and shawls ; and were 
not above clogs and pattens. Moreover, there were places in 
the mill in w^hich they could deposit these things without 
injury ; and there were conveniences for washing. They 
were healthy in appearance, many of them remarkably so, and 
had the manners and deportment of young women : not of 
degraded brutes of burden. If I had seen in one of those 
mills (but I did not, though I looked for something of this 
kind with a sharp eye), the most lisping, mincing, afi'ected, 
and ridiculous young creature that my imagination could 
suggest, I should have thought of the careless, moping, 



250 AMERICAN NOTES 

elatternly, degraded, dull reverse (I have seen that), and should 
have been still well pleased to look upon her. 

The rooms in which they worked, were as well ordered as 
themselves. In the windows of some, there were green plants, 
which were trained to shade the glass ; in all, there was as 
much fresh air, cleanliness, and comfort, as the nature of the 
occupation would possibly admit of. Out of so large a 
number of females, many of whom were only then just verging 
upon womanhood, it may be reasonably supposed that some 
were delicate and fragile in appearance : no doubt there were. 
But I solemnly declare, that from all the crowd J saw in the 
different factories that day, I cannot recal or separate one 
young face that gave me a painful impression ; not one young 
girl whom, assuming it to be matter of necessity that she 
should gain her daily bread by the labour of her hands, I 
would have removed from those works if I had had the power. 

They reside in various boarding-houses near at hand. The 
owners of the mills are particularly careful to allow no persons 
to enter upon the possession of these houses, whose characters 
have not undergone the most searching and thorough inquiry. 
Any complaint that is made against them, by the boarders, or 
by any one else, is fully investigated ; and if good ground of 
complaint be shown to exist against them, they are removed, 
and their occupation is handed over to some more deserving 
person. There are a few childi^en employed in these factories, 
but not many. The laws of the State forbid their working 
more than nine months in the year, and require that they be 
educated during the other three. Per this purpose there are 
schools in Lowell ; and there are churches and chapels of 
various persuasions, in which the young women may observe 
that form of worship in which they have been educated. 

At some distance from the factories, and on the highest and 
pleasantest ground in the neighbourhood, stands their hospital, 
or boarding-house for the sick : it is ih.Q best house in those 
parts, and w^as built by an eminent merchant for his own 
residence. Like tliat institution at Boston, which I have 
before described, it is not parcelled out into wards, but is 
divided into convenient chambers, each of which has all the 
comforts of a very comfortable home. The principal medical 
attendant resides under the same roof ; and were the patients 
members of his own family, they could not be better cared for, 
or attended with greater gentleness and consideration. The 



FOR GEJIERAL CIRCULATION. 251 

weekly charge in this establisliment for each female patient is 
three dollars, or i.welve shillings English ; but no girl emploj-ed 
by any of the corporations is ever excluded for want of the 
means of payment. That they do not very often want the 
means, may be gathered from the fact, that in July, 1841, no 
fewer than nine hundred and seventy-eight of these girls were 
depositors in the Lowell Savings Bank : the amount of whose 
joint savings was estimated at one hundred thousand dollars, 
or twenty thousand English pounds. 

I am now going to state three facts, which wiU startle a 
large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. 

Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the 
boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies 
subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up 
among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, 
*' A repository of original articles, written exclusively by 
females actively employed in the mills," — which is duly 
printed, published, and sold ; and whereof I brought away 
from Lowell four hundi^ed good solid pages, which I have read 
from beginning to end. 

The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will 
exclaim, with one voice, " How very preposterous ! " On my 
deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, *' These things 
are above their station." In reply to that objection, I would 
beg to ask what their station is. 

It is their station to work. And they do work. They 
labour in these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, 
which is unquestionably work, and pretty tight work too. 
Perhaps it is above their station to indulge in such amusements, 
on any terms. Are we quite sure that we in England have 
not formed our ideas of the " station " of working people, 
from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation of that 
class as they are, and not as they might be ? I think that 
if we examine our own feelings, we shall find that the pianos, 
and the circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, 
startle us by their novelty, and not by their bearing upon any 
abstract question of right or TVT.'ong. 

For myself, I know no • station in which, the occupation of 
to-day cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheer- 
fully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most human- 
ising and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more 
endurable to the person in it, or more safe to the person out 



252 AMERICAN NOTES 

of it, by haying ignorance for its associate. Itnc^ no station 
which has a riglit to monopolise the means of mutual instruc- 
tion, improvement, and rational entertainment ; or which has 
ever continued to be a station very long, after seeking to 
do so. 

Of the merits of the Lowell Offering as a literary produc- 
tion, I will only observe, putting entirely out of sig^ht the 
fact of the articles having been written by these girls after 
the arduous labours of the day, that it will compare advan- 
tageously with a great many English Annuals. It is pleasant 
to find that many of its Tales are of the Mills and of those 
who work in them ; that they inculcate habits of self-denial 
and contentment, and teach good doctrines of enlarged bene- 
volence. A strong feeling for the beauties of nature, aa 
displayed in the solitudes the writers have left at home, 
breathes through its pages like wholesome village air ; and 
though a circulating library is a favourable school for the 
study of such topics, it has very scant allusion to fine clothes, 
fine marriages, fine houses, or fine life. Some persons might 
object to the papers being signed occasionally with rather fine 
names, but this is an American fashion. One of the provinces 
of the state legislature of Massachusetts is to alter ugly names 
into pretty ones, as the childi-en improve upon the tastes of 
their parents. These changes costing little or nothing, scores 
of ISIary Annes are solemnly converted into Bevelinas every 
session. 

It is said that on the occasion of a visit from General 
Jackson or General Harrison to this town (I forget which, but 
it is not to the purpose), he walked through tliree miles and a 
half of these young ladies all dressed out with parasols and 
silk stockings. But as I am not aware that any worse conse- 
quence ensued, than a sudden looking-up of all the parasols 
and silk stockings in the market ; and perhaps the Bankruptcy 
of some speculative New Englander who bought them all up at 
any price, in expectation of a demand that never came ; I set 
no great store by the circumstance. 

In this brief account of Lowell, and inadequate expression 
of the gratification it yielded me, and cannot foil to afford to 
any foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home 
is a subject of interest and anxious speculation, I have care- 
fidly abstained from drawing a comparison between these 
factories and those of our own land. Many of the circum- 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 253 

fitances wliose strong influence has been at -work for years in 
our manufacturing towns have not arisen here ; and there is 
no manufacturing population in Lowell, so to speak : for these 
girls (often the daughters of small farmers) come from other 
States, remain a few years in the mills, and then go home for 
good. 

The contrast would he a strong one, for it would be 
between the Good and Evil, the living light and deepest 
shadow. I abstain from it, because I deem it just to do so. 
But I only the more earnestly adjure all those whose eyes may 
rest on these pages, to pause and reflect upon the difference 
between this town and those great haunts of desperate misery : 
to call to mind, if they can in the midst of party strife and 
squabble, the efibrts that must be made to purge them of their 
suffering and danger : and last, and foremost, to remember 
how the precious Time is rushing by. 

I returned at night by the same railroad and in the same 
kind of car. One of the passengers being exceedingly anxious 
to expound at great length to my companion (not to me, of 
course) the true principles on which books of travel in America 
should be written by Englishmen, I feigned to fall asleep. 
But glancing all the way out at window from the corners of 
my eyes, I found abundance of entertainment for the rest of 
the ride in watching the effects of the wood fire, which had 
been invisible in the morning but were now brought out in 
full relief by the darkness : for we were travelling in a whirl- 
wind of bright sparks, which showered about us like a storm 
of fiery snow. 



254 AMEBICAN NOTES 



CKAPTEU V. 

■WORCESTER, THB CONNECTICUT RIVER. HARTFORD. NEW HAVEN. 

TO NEW YORK. 

Leaving Boston on the afternoon of Saturday the fifth of 
February, we proceeded by another raih'oad to Worcester : a 
pretty New England town, where we had arranged to remain 
under the hospitable roof of the Governor of the State, until 
Monday morning. 

These towns and cities of New England (many of which 
would be villages in Old England), are as favourable specimens 
of rural America, as their people are of rural Americans. 
The well-trimmed lawns and green meadows of home are not 
there ; and the grass, compared with our ornamental plots and 
pastures, is rank, and^rough, and wild: but delicate slopes of 
land, gently- swelling hills, wooded valleys, and slender streams, 
abound. Every little colony of houses has its church and 
school-house peeping fi-om among the white roofs and shady 
trees ; every house is the whitest of the white ; every Venetian 
blind the greenest of the green; every fine day's sky the 
bluest of the blue. A sharp dry wind and a slight frost had 
go hardened the roads when we alighted at Worcester, that 
their furrowed tracks were like ridges of granite. There was 
the usual aspect of newness on every object, of course. AU 
the buildings looked as if they had been built and painted 
that morning, and could be taken down on Monday with very 
little trouble. In the keen evening air, every sharp outline 
looked a hundred times sharper than ever. The clean card- 
board colonnades had no more perspective than a Chinese 
bridge on a tea-cup, and appeared equally well calculated for 
use. The razor-like edges of the detached cottages seemed to 
cut the very wind as it whistled against them, and to send it 
smarting on its way with a shriller cry tlian before. Those 
sliglitly-built wooden dwellings behind which the sun waa 
setting with a brilliant lustie, could be so looked through and 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 255 

throTigli, tliat the idea of any inhabitant being able to hide 
himself from the public gaze, or to have any secrets from the 
public eye, was not entertainable for a moment. Even where 
a blazing fire shone through the uncurtained windows of some 
distant house, it had the air of being newly-lighted, and of 
lacking warmth; and instead of awakening thoughts of a 
snug chamber, bright with faces that first saw the light round 
that same hearth, and ruddy with warm hangings, it came 
upon one suggestive of the smell of new mortar and damp 
walls. 

So I thought, at least, that evening. Next morning when 
the sun was shining brightly, and the clear church bells were 
ringing, and sedate people in their best clothes enlivened the 
pathway near at hand and dotted the distant thread of road, 
there was a pleasant Sabbath peacefulness on everything, 
which it was good to feel. It would have been the better for 
an old church ; better still for some old graves ; but as it was, 
a wholesome repose and tranquillity pervaded the scene, which 
after the restless ocean and the hurried city, had a doubly 
grateful influence on the spirits. 

We went on next morning, still by railroad, to Springfield. 
From that place to Hartford, whither we were bound, is a 
distance of only five-and-twenty miles, but at that time of the 
year the roads were so bad that the journey would probably 
have occuj)ied ten or tAvelve hours. Fortunately, however, 
the winter having been unusually mild, the Connecticut River 
was *'open," or, in other words, not frozen. The captain of 
a small steam-boat was going to make his first trip for the 
season that day (the second February trip, I believe, within 
the memory of man), and only waited for us to go on board. 
Accordingly, we went on board, with as little delay as might 
be. He was as good as his word, and started directly. 

It certainly was not called a small steam -boat without 
reason. I omitted to ask the question, but I should think it 
must have been of about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the 
celebrated Dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the 
cabin, which was fitted with common sash-windows like an 
ordinary dwelling -house. These windows had bright -red 
curtains, too, jiuug on slack strings across the lower panes ; 
60 that it looked like the parlour of a Lilliputian public-house, 
which had got afioat in a flood or some other water accident, 
and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in thit? 



256 AMERICAN NOTES 

chamlDer there was a rocliing-cliair. It Tvoiild "be impossible 
to get on anywliere, in America, without a rocking'-chair. 

I am afraid to tell how many feet short this vessel was, or 
how many feet narrow : to apply the words length and width, 
to such measurement would be a contradiction in terms. But 
I may state that we all kept the middle of the deck, lest the 
boat should unexpectedly tip over ; and that the macliinery, 
by some surprising process of condensation, worked between 
it and the keel : the whole forming a warm sandwich, about 
three feet thick. 

It rained all day as I once thought it never did rain any- 
where, but in the Highlands of Scotland. The river was full 
of floating blocks of ice, which were constantly crunching 
and cracking under us ; -and the depth of water, in the course 
we took to avoid the larger masses, carried down the middle 
of the river by the current, did not exceed a few inches. 
Nevertheless, we moved on-\^^ard, dexterously ; and being well 
wi'apped up, bade defiance to the weather, and enjoyed the 
journey. The Connecticut River is a fine stream ; and the 
banks in summer-time are, I have no doubt, beautiful : at all 
events I was told so by a j^oung lady in the cabin ; and she 
should be a judge of beauty, if the possession of a quaUty 
include the appreciation of it, for a more beautiful creature I 
never looked upon. 

After two hours and a half of this odd travelling (including 
a stoppage at a small town, where we were saluted by a gun 
considerably bigger than our own chimney), we reached Hart- 
ford, and straightway repaired to an extremely comfortable 
hotel : except, as usual, in the article of bed-rooms, which, 
in almost every place we visited, were very conducive to early 
rising. 

We tarried here four days. The town is beautifully situ- 
ated in a basin of green hills ; the soil is rich, well-wooded, 
and carefully improved. It is the seat of the local legislature 
of Connecticut, which sage body enacted, in by-gone times, 
the renowned code of " Blue Laws," in virtue whereof, among 
other enlightened provisions, any citizen who could be proved 
to have kissed his wife on Suuda}^, was punisliable, I believe, 
witli the stocks. Too much of the old Puritan spirit exists 
in those parts to the present liour ; but its influence has -not 
tended, that I know, to make the people less hard in their 
bargains, or more equal in their dealings. As I never heard 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION 267 

of its working that effect anywhere else, I infer that it never 
will, here. Indeed, I am accustomed, with reference to great 
professions and severe faces, to judge of the goods of the 
other world pretty much as I judge of the goods of this ; and 
whenever I see a dealer in such commodities with too great a 
display of them in his window, I doubt the quality of the 
article within. 

In Hartford stands the famous oak in which the charter of 
Kmg Charles was hidden. It is now enclosed in a gentleman's 
garden. In the State-house is the charter itself I found the 
com^s of law here, just the same as at Boston; the public 
Institutions almost as good. The Insane Asylum is admirably 
conducted, and so is the Institution for the Deaf and Dumb. 

I very much questioned within myself, as I walked through 
the Insane Asylum, whether I should have known the 
attendants from the patients, but for the few words which passed 
between the former, and the Doctor, in reference to the persons 
imder their charge. Of course I limit this remark merely to 
their looks ; for the conversation of the mad people was mad 
enouo:h. 

There was one little prim old lady, of very smiling and 
good-humored appearance, who came sidling up to me from the 
end of a long passage, and with a curtsey of inexpressible con- 
descension, propounded this unaccountable inquiry : 

''Does Pontefract still flourish, sir, upon the soil of 
England?" 

*' He does, ma'am," I rejoined. 

" When you last saw him, sir, he was " 

''Well, ma'am,^' said I, '' extremely weU. He begged me 
to present his compliments. I never saw him looking better." 

At this, the old lady was very much delighted After 
glancing at me for a moment, as if to be quite sure that I wag 
serious m my respectful air, she sidled back some paces; sidled 
forward again; made a sudden skip (at which I precipitately 
retreated a step or two) ; and said : 

"J am an antediluvian, sir." 

I thought the best thing to say was, that I had suspected as 
much from the first. Therefore I said so. 

" It is an extremely proud and pleasant thing, sir, to be an 
antediluvian," said the old lady. 

" I should think it was, ma'am," I rejoined. 

The old lady kissed her hand, gave another skip, smirked 



258 AMERICAN NOTES 

and sidled down tlie gallery in a most extraordinary manner, 
and ambled gracefully into her own bed-chamber. 

In another part of the building, there was a male patient in 
bed ; very much flushed and heated. 

" Well ! " said he, starting up, and pulling off his night- 
cap : '' It 's all settled, at last. I have arranged it with queen 
Victoria." 

*' Arranged what?" asked the Doctor. 

" Why, that business," passing his hand wearily acioss his 
forehead, '' about the siege of New York." 

'' Oh ! " said I, like a man suddenly enlightened. For he 
looked at me for an answer. 

"Yes. Every house without a signal will be fired upon by 
the British troops. No harm will be done to the others. No 
harm at all. Those that want to be safe, must hoist flags. 
That 's all they '11 have to do. They must hoist flags." 

Even while he was speaking he seemed, I thought, to have 
some faint idea that his talk was incoherent. Directly he had 
said these words, he lay down again ; gave a kind of a groan ; 
and covered his hot head with the blankets. 

There was another : a young man, whose madness was love 
and music. After playing on the accordion a march ho had 
composed, he was very anxious that I should walk into his 
chamber, which I immediately did. 

By way of being very knowing, and humoring him to the 
top of his bent, I went to the window, which commanded a 
beautiful prospect, and remarked, with an address upon which 
I greatly plumed myself: 

" What a delicious country you have about these lodgings 
of yours." 

" Poh ! " said he, moving his fingers carelessly over the notes 
of his instrument : '' Well enough for such an Institution as 
this ' " 

I don't think I was ever so taken aback in all my life. 

" I come here just for a whim," he said coolly. " That 's 
all." 

"Oh! That 'sail!" said I. 

*' Yes. That 's all. The Doctor 's a smart man. He quite 
enters into it. It 's a joke of mine. I like it for a time. You 
needn't mention it, but I think I shall go out next Tuesday!" 

I assured him that I would consider our interview perfectly 
confidential; and rejoined the Doctor. As we were passing 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 259 

tlirotigli a gallery on our way out, a well-dressed lady, of quiet 
and composed manners, came up, and proffering a slip of paper 
and a pen, begged that I would oblige ber with an autograph. 
I complied, and we parted. 

" I think I remember having had a few interviews like that, 
with ladies out of doors. I hope she is not mad ? " 

''Yes." 

*' On what subject ? Autographs ? '* 

" No. She hears voices in the air." 

" Well ! " thought I, "it would be well if we could shut up 
a few false prophets of these later times, who have professed to 
do the same ; and I should like to try the experiment on a 
Mormonist or two to begin with." 

In this place, there is the best Jail for untried offenders in the 
world. There is also a very well-ordered State prison, arranged 
upon the same plan as that at Boston, except that here, there 
is always a sentry on the wall with a loaded gun. It contained 
at that time about two hundred prisoners. A spot was shown 
me in the sleeping ward, where a watchman was murdered 
some years since in the dead of night, in a desperate attempt 
to escape, made by a prisoner who had broken from his cell. 
A woman, too, was pointed out to me, who, for the murder of 
her husband, had been a close prisoner for sixteen years. 

"Do you think," I asked of my conductor, "that after so 
very long an imprisonment^ she has any thought or hope of 
ever regaining her liberty ? " 

" Oh dear yes," he answered. "To be sure she has.' 

*' She has no chance of obtaining it, I suppose ? " 

* "Well, I don't know : " which, by the bye, is a national 
answer. " Her friends mistrust her." 

" What have they to do with it? " I naturally inquired. 

" WeU, they won't petition." 

" But if they did, they couldn't get her out, I suppose ? '* 

" Well, not the first time, perhaps, nor yet the second, but 
tiring and wearying for a few years might do it." 

" Does that ever do it? " 

" Why yes, that '11 do it sometimes. Political friends 'U do 
it sometimes. It 's pretty often done, one way or another." 

I shall always entertain a very pleasant and grateful recol- 
lection of Hartford. It is a lovely place, and I had many 
friends there, whom I can never remember with indifference. 
We left it with no little regret on the evening of Friday the 

62 



260 AMERICAN NOTES 

11th, and travelled that night by railroad to New Haven. 
Upon the way, the guard and I were formally introduced to 
each other (as we usually were on such occasions), and 
exchanged a variety of small-talk. We reached New Haven 
at about eight o'clock, after a journey of three hours, and put 
"up for the night at the best inn. 

New Haven, kno^Ti also as the City of Elms, is a fine town. 
Many of its streets (as its alias sufficiently imports) are planted 
with rows of grand old elm-trees ; and the same natural 
ornaments surround Yale College, an establishment of consider- 
able eminence and reputation. The various departments of 
this Institution are erected in a kind of park or common in the 
middle of the town, where they are dimly visible among the 
shadowing trees. The effect is very like that of an old cathedral 
yard in England ; and when their branches are in full leaf, 
must be extremely picturesque. Even in the winter time, 
these groujDS of well-grown trees, clustering among the busy 
streets and houses of a thriving city, have a very quaint 
appearance : seeming to bring about a kind of compromise 
between town and country ; as if each had met the other half- 
way, and shaken hands upon it ; which is at once novel and 
pleasant. 

After a night's rest, we rose early, and in good time went 
down to the wharf, and on board the packet New York /or New 
York. This was the first American steamboat of any size that 
I had seen ; and certainly to an English eye it was infinitely 
less like a steamboat than a huge floating bath. I could 
hardly persuade myself, indeed, but that the bathing establish- 
ment off Westminster Bridge, which I left a baby, had 
suddenly grown to an enormous size ; run away from home ; 
and set up in foreign parts as a steamer. Being in America, 
too, which our vagabonds do so particularly favor, it seemed 
the more probable. 

The great difference in appearance between these packets and 
ours, is, that there is so much of them out of the water : the 
main-deck being enclosed on all sides, and filled with casks and 
goods, like any second or third floor in a stack of warehouses ; 
and the promenade or hurricane-deck being a-top of that again. 
A part of the machinery is always above this deck ; where the 
connecting-rod, in a strong and lofty frame, is seen working 
away like an iron top-sawj'er. There is seldom any mast or 
tackle : nothing aloft but two tall black chimne3^s. Tlie man 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 261 

at the helm is shut up in a little house in the fore part of the 
boat (the wheel heiug- connected with the rudder by iron 
chains, working the whole length of the deck) ; and the 
passengers, unless the weather be very fine indeed, usually 
congregate below. Directly you have left the wharf, all the 
life, and stir, and bustle of a packet cease. You wonder for a 
long time how she goes on, for there seems to be nobody in 
charge of her ; and when another of these dull machines comes 
splashing by, you feel quite indignant with it, as a sullen, 
cumbrous, imgraceful, unshiplike leviathan : quite forgetting 
that the vessel you are on board of, is its very counterpart. 

There is always a clerk's office on the lower deck, where 
you pay your fare; a ladies' cabin; baggage and stowage 
rooms ; engineer's room; and in short a great variety of per- 
plexities Avhich render the discovery of the gentlemen's cabin, 
a matter of some difficulty. It often occupies the whole length 
of the boat (as it did in this case), and has three or four tiers 
of berths on each side. When I first descended into the cabin 
of the New York, it looked, in my unaccustomed eyes, about 
as long as the Buiiington Arcade. 

The Sound Avhich has to be crossed on this passage, is not 
always a very safe or pleasant navigation, and has been the 
scene of some unfortunate accidents. It was a wet morning, 
and very misty, and we soon lost sight of land. The day was 
calm, however, and brightened towards noon. After exhausting 
(with good help from a friend) the larder, and the stoclc of 
bottled beer, I lay down to sleep : being very much tired with 
the fatigues of yesterday. But I awoke from my nap in time 
to hurry up, and see Hell Giite, the Hog's Back, the Frying 
Pan, and other notorious localities, attractive to all readers of 
famous Diedrich Knickerbocker's History. We were now in a 
narrow channel, with sloping banks on either side, besprinkled 
with pleasant villas, and made refreshing to the sight by turf 
and trees. Soon we shot in quick succession, past a lighthouse ; 
a madhouse (how the lunatics flung up their caps and roared 
in sjTupathy with the headlong engine and the driving tide !) ; 
a jail ; and other buildings : and so emerged into a noble bay, 
whose waters sparkled in the now cloudless sunshine like 
Nature's eyes turned up to Heaven. 

Then there lay stretched out before us, to the right, confused 
heaps of buildings, with here and there a spire or steeple, 
looking down upon the herd below j and here and there, again, 



262 AMERICAN NOTES 

a cloud of lazy smoke ; and in the foreground a forest of sliipsr 
masts, cheery ^ith flapping* sails and waving flags. Crossing 
from among them to the opposite shore, were steam ferr}' -boats 
laden with people, coaches, horses, waggons, baskets, boxes : 
crossed and recrossed by other ferry-boats : all travelling to 
and fro : and never idle. Stately among these restless Insects, 
were two or three large ships, moving with slow majestic pace, 
as creatures of a prouder kind, disdainful of their puny 
journeys, and making for the broad sea. Beyond, were shining 
heights, and islands in the glancing river, and a distance 
scarcely less blue and bright than the sky it seemed to meet. 
The city's hum and buzz, the clinking of capstans, the ringing 
of bells, the barking of dogs, the clattering of wheels, tingled 
in the listening ear. All of which life and stir, coming across 
the stirring water, caught new life and animation from its free 
companionship ; and, sympathising with its buoyant spirits, 
glistened as it seemed in sport upon its surface, and hemmed 
the vessel round, and plashed the water high about her sides, 
and, floating her gallantly into the dock, flew off again to 
welcome other comers, and speed before them to the busy 
port. 



rOfi GENEEAL CIRCULATION. 263 



CHAPTER YI. 



NEW YORK. 



The beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so 
clean a city as Boston, but many of its streets have the same 
characteristics ; except that the houses are not quite so fresh- 
coloured, the sign-boards are not quite so gaudy, the gilded 
letters not quite so golden, the bricks not quite so red, the 
stone not quite so white, the blinds and area railings not quite 
so green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors, not quite 
so bright and twinkling. There are many bye-streets, almost 
as neutral in clean colours, and positive in dirty ones, as bye- 
streets in London; and there is one quarter, commonly called 
the Five Points, which, in respect of filth and wretchedness, 
may be safely backed against Seven Dials, or any other part 
of famed St. Giles's. 

The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people 
know, is Broadway ; a wide and bustling street, which, from 
the Battery Gardens to its opposite termination in a country 
road, may be four miles long. Shall we sit down in an 
upper floor of the Carlton House Hotel (situated in the best 
part of this main artery of New York), and when we are 
tired of looking down upon the life below, sally forth arm-in- 
arm and mingle with the stream ? 

Warm weather I The sun strikes upon our heads at this open 
window, as though its rays were concentrated through a burn- 
ing-glass ; but the day is in its zenith, and the season an 
unusual one. Was there ever such a sunny street as this 
Broadway ! The pavement stones are polished with the tread 
of feet until they shine again ; the red bricks of the houses 
might be yet in the dry, hot kilns ; and the roofs of those 
omnibuses look as though, if water were poured on them, 
they would hiss and smoke, and smell like half-quenched 
fii-es. No stint of omnibuses here ! Haifa dozen have gone 
by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs and 



264 AMERICAN NOTSS 

coaclies too; gigs, phaetons, large -"wheeled tilburies, and 
private carriages — rather of a clumsy make, and not very 
different from the public vehicles, but built for the heavy 
roads beyond the city pavement. Negro coachmen and white ; 
in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps, fur caps ; 
in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped 
jean and linen ; and there, in that one instance (look while 
it passes, or it will be too late), in suits of livery. Some 
southern republican that, who puts his blacks in uniform, and 
swells with Sultan pomp and power. Yonder, where that 
phaeton with the well-clipped pair of grays has stopped — 
standing at their heads now — is a Yorkshire groom, who has 
not been very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round 
for a companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the 
city half a year without meeting. Heaven save the ladies, 
how they dress ! We have seen more colours in these ten 
minutes, than we should have seen elsewhere, in as many 
days. What various parasols ! what rainbow silks and satins ! 
what pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, 
and fluttering of ribbons and sills: tassels, and display of rich 
cloaks with gaudy hoods and linings ! The young gentlemen 
are fond, you see, of tiu-ning down their shirt -collars and 
cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin ; but they 
cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to 
say the truth, humanity of quite another sort. Byrous of 
the desk and counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of 
men those are beliiud ye : those two labourers in holiday 
clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a crumpled 
scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard 
name, while the other looks about for it on all the doors and 
windows. 

Irishmen both ! You might know them, if they were 
masked, by their long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, 
and their drab trowsers, Avhich they wear like men well used 
to working dresses, who are easy in no others. It would be 
hard to keep your model republics going, without the 
countrymen and countrywomen of those two labourers. For 
who else would dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic 
work, and make canals and roads, and execute great lines of 
Internal Improvement ! Irishmen both, and sorely puzzled 
too, to find out what they seek. Let us go down, and help 
tliem, for the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 266 

admits of honest service to honest men, and honest wort for 
honest bread, no matter what it be. 

That 's well ! We have got at the right address at last, 
though it is written in strange characters truly, and might 
have been scrawled with the blunt handle of the spade the 
■writer better knows the use of, than a pen. Their way lies 
yonder, but what business takes them there ? They carry 
savings : to hoard up ? No. They are brothers, those men. 
One crossed the sea alone, and working very hard for one 
half year, and living harder, saved funds enough to bring the 
other out. That done, they worked together side by side, 
contentedly sharing hard labour and hard living for another 
term, and then their sisters came, and then another brother, 
and lastly, their old mother. And what now? Why, the 
poor old crone is restless in a strange land, and yearns to lay 
her bones, she says, among her people in the old graveyard 
at home : and so they go to pay her passage back : and God 
help her and them, and every simple heart, and all who turn 
to the Jerusalem of their younger days, and have an altar- 
fii-e upon the cold hearth of their fathers. 

This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the 
sun, is Wall Street : the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street 
of New York. Many a rapid fortune has been made in this 
street, and many a no less rapid ruin. Some of these very 
merchants whom you see hanging about here now, have 
locked up money in their strong-boxes, like the man in the 
Arabian Nights, and opening them again, have found but 
withered leaves. Below, here by the water side, where the 
bowsprits of ships stretch across the footway, and almost 
thrust themselves into the windows, lie the noble American 
vessels which have made their Packet Service the finest in the 
world. They have brought hither the foreigners who abound 
in all the streets : not perhaps, that there are more here, than 
in other commercial cities ; but elsewhere, they have 
particular haunts, and you must find them out ; here, they 
pervade the town. 

We must cross Broadway again ; gaining some refreshment 
from the heat, in the sight of the great blocks of clean ice 
which are being carried into shops and bar-rooms ; and the 
pine- apples and water-melons profusely displayed for sale. 
Fine streets of spacious houses here, you see ! — Wall Street 
has furnished and dismantled many of them very often — and 



266 AMERICAN NOTES 

here a deep green leafy square. Be sure that is a hospitable 
house with inmates to be affectionately remembered always, 
where they have the open door and pretty show of plants 
within, and where the child with laughing eyes is peeping 
out of window at the little dog below. You wonder what 
may be the use of this tall flagstaff in the bye-street, with 
something like Liberty's head-dress on its top: so do I. 
But there is a passion for tall flagstaffs hereabout, and you 
may see its twin brother in five minutes, if you have a mind. 

Again across Broadway, and so — passing from the many- 
coloui'ed crowd and glittering shops — into another long main 
street, the Bowery. A rail-road yonder, see, where two stout 
horses trot along, drawing a score or two of people and a 
great wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer here; 
the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-made, and meat ready- 
cooked, are to be bought in these parts ; and the lively whirl 
of carriages is exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and 
waggons. These signs which are so plentiful, in shape like 
river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted by cords to poles, and 
dangling there, announce, as you may see by looking up, 
" Oysters in every Style." They tempt the hungry most 
at night, for then dull candles glimmering inside, illuminate 
these dainty words, and make the mouths of idlers water, aa 
they read and linger. 

What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like 
an enchanter's palace in a melodrama! — a famous prison, 
called The Tombs. Shall we go in ? 

So. A long narrow lofty building, stove-heated as usual, 
with four galleries, one above the other, going round it, and 
communicating by stairs. Between the two sides of each 
gallery, and in its centre, a bridge, for the greater convenience 
of crossing. On each of these bridges sits a man : dozing oi 
reading, or talking to an idle companion. On each tier, are 
two opposite rows of small iron doors. They look like fui-nace 
doors, but are cold and black, as though the fii-es within had 
all gone out. Some two or three are open, and women, with 
drooping heads bent down, are talking to the inmates. The 
whole is lighted by a skylight, but it is fast closed ; and from 
the roof there dangle, limp and drooping, two useless windsails. 

A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-look- 
ing feUow, and, in his way, civil and obliging. 

** Are those black doors the colls ? '* 



FOB GENERAL CIRCULATION. 267 

"Yes." 

" Are they aUfuU?" 

" Well, they 're pretty nigh Ml, and that 's a fact, and no 
two ways about it." 

" Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely ? " 

"Why, we do only put coloured people in 'em. That's 
the truth." 

" When do the prisoners take exercise ? '* 

" Well, they do without it pretty much." 

" Do they never walk in the yard ? " 

" Considerable seldom." 

" Sometimes, I suppose ? " 

" Well, it 's rare they do. They keep pretty bright without 
It. 

"But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth. I 
know this is only a prison for criminals who are charged 
with grave offences, while they are awaiting their trial, or 
are under remand, but the law, here, affords criminals many 
means of delay. What with motions for new trial, and in 
arrest of judgment, and what not, a prisoner might be here 
for twelve months, I take it, might he not?" 

" Well, I guess he might." 

" Do you mean to say that in all that time he would never 
come out at that little iron door, for exercise ? " 

" He might walk some, perhaps — not much." 

" Will you open one of the doors ? " 

" AU, if you like." 

The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the doors turns 
slowly on its hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell, 
into which the light enters through a high chink in the wall! 
There is a rude means of washing, a table, and a bedstead. 
Upon the latter, sits a man of sixty ; reading. He looks up 
for a moment ; gives an impatient dogged shake ; and fixes 
his eyes upon his book again. As we withdrew our heads, 
the door closes on him, and is fastened as before. This man 
has murdered his wife, and will probably be hanged 

" How long has he been here ? " 

"A month," 

" When will he be tried?" 

" Next term." 

"When is that?" 

"Next month." 



268 AMERICAN NOTES 

'* In England, if a man be under sentence of death even, 
lie has air and exercise at certain periods of the day." 

''Possible?" 

With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says 
this, and how loimgingiy he leads on to the women's side : 
making, as he goes, a kind of iron Castanet of the key and the 
stair-rail ! 

Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it* 
Some of the women peep anxiously through it at the sound of 
footsteps ; others shrink away in shame. — For what offence 
can that lonely child, of ten or twelve years old, be shut up 
here ? Oh ! that boy ? He is the son of the prisoner we saw 
just now ; is a witness against his father ; and is detained 
here for safe-keeping, until the trial ; that 's all. 

But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long 
days and nights in. This is rather hard treatment for a 
young witness, is it not ? — What says our conductor ? 

*' Well, it an't a very rowdy life, and that's a fact ! " 

Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us leisurely 
away. I have a question to ask him as we go. 

*' Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs ?" 

*' Well, it 's the cant name." 

"I know it is. Why?" ^ 

" Some suicides happened here, when it was first built. I 
expect it come about from that." 

** I saw just now, that that man's clothes were scattered 
about the floor of his cell. Don't you oblige the prisoners to 
be orderly, and put such things away ? " 

" Where should they put 'em ? " 

''Not on the ground, surely. What do you say to hanging 
them up ? " 

He stops and looks round to emphasise his answer : 

"Why, I say that's just it. When they had hooks they 
uould hang themselves, so they 're taken out of every cell, and 
there 's only the marks left where they used to be ! " 

The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been the 
scene of terrible performances. Into this narrow, grave-like 
place, men are brought out to die. The wi'etched creature 
stands beneath the gibbet on the ground ; the rope about his 
neck ; and when the sign is given, a weight at its other end 
comes running down, and swings him up into the air — a 
corpse. 



FOB, GENERAL CIRCULATION. 269 

The law requires that there be present at this dismal 
spectacle, the judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of 
twenty-live. From the community it is hidden. To the disso- 
lute and bad, the thing remains a frightful mystery. Between 
the criminal and them, the prison-wall is interposed as a thick 
gloomy veil. It is the ciu^tain to his bed of death, his wind- 
ing sheet, and grave. From him it shuts out life, and all 
the motives to unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which 
its mere sight and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain. 
There are no bold eyes to make him bold ; no ruffians to 
uphold a ruffian's name before. AH beyond the pitiless stone 
wall, is unknown space. 

Let us go forth again into the cheerfid streets. 

Once more in Broadway ! Here are the same ladies in 
bright colours, walking to and fro, in pairs and singly; 
yonder the very same light blue parasol which passed and 
repassed the hotel-window twenty times while we were sitting 
there. We are going to cross here. Take care of the pigs. 
Two portly sows are trotting up behind this carriage, and a 
select party of half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs have just now 
turned the corner. 

Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by himself. 
He has only one ear ; having parted with the other to vagrant- 
dogs in the course of his city rambles. But he gets on very 
well without it ; and leads a roving, gentlemanly, vagabond 
kind of life, somewhat answering to that of our club-men at 
home. He leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain 
hour, throws himself upon the town, gets through his day in 
some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly 
appears at the door of his own house again at night, like the 
mysterious master of Gil Bias. He is a free-and-easy, care- 
less, indifferent kind of pig, having a very large acquaintance 
among other pigs of the same character, whom he rather 
knows by sight than conversation, as he seldom troubles him- 
seK to stop and exchange civilities, but goes grunting down 
the kennel, turning up the news and small-talk of the city in 
the shape of cabbage -stalks and offal, and bearing no taila 
but his own : which is a very short one, for his old enemies, 
the dogs, have been at that too, and have left him hardly 
enough to swear by. He is in every respect a republican pig 
going wherever he pleases, and mingling with the best society, 
on an equals if not superior footing, for every one makes way 



270 AMERICAN NOTES 

when he appears, and the haug-htiest give him the wall, if 
he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, and seldom moved, 
unless by the dogs before mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, 
you may see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, 
whose carcase garnishes a butcher's door-post, but he grunts 
out *' Such is life : all flesh is pork ! " bui'ies his nose in the 
mire again, and waddles down the gutter : comforting himself 
with the reflection that there is one snout the less to anticipate 
stray cabbage-stalks, at any rate. 

They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they 
are ; having, for the most part, scant}^ brown backs, like the 
lids of old horse-hair trunks : spotted with unwholesome black 
blotches. They have long, gaunt legs, too, and such peaked 
snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded to sit for his 
profile, nobody would recognise it for a pig's likeness. They 
are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but 
are thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become 
preternaturally knowing in consequence. Every pig knows 
where he lives, much better than anybody could tell him. At 
this hour, just as evening is closing in, you will see them 
roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the last. 
Occasionally, some youth among them who has over-eaten 
himself, or has been much worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly 
homeward, like a prodigal son : but this is a rare case : per- 
fect self-possession and self-reliance, and immovable composure, 
being their foremost attributes. 

The streets and shops are lighted now; and as the eye 
travels down the long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets 
of gas, it is reminded of Oxford Street or Piccadilly. Here 
and there a flight of broad stone cellar-steps appears, and a 
painted lamp directs you to the Bowling Saloon, or Ten-Pin 
alley : Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and skill, 
invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine- 
Pins. At other downward flights of steps, are other lamps, 
marking the whereabouts of oyster-cellars — pleasant retreats, 
say I : not only by reason of their wonderful cookery of 
oysters, pretty nigh as large as cheese-plates, (or for thy dear 
sake, heartiest of Greek Professors !) but because of all kinds 
of eaters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these latitudes, the swal- 
lowers of oysters alone are not gregarious ; but subduing 
themselves, as it were, to the natiu'e of what they work 
in, and copying the coyness of the thing thoy eat, do sit 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 271 

apart in curtained boxes, and consort by twos, not by two 
hundreds. 

But how quiet the streets are ! Are there no itinerant 
bands ; no wind or stringed instruments ? No, not one. By 
day, are there no Punches, Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, 
Conjurors, Orchestrinas, or even Barrel-organs? No, not 
one. Yes, I remember one. One barrel-organ and a dancing- 
monkey — sportive by nature, but fast fading into a dull, 
lumpish monkey, of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, 
nothing lively ; no, not so much as a white mouse in a twirl- 
ing cage. 

Are there no amusements ? Yes, there is a lecture-room 
across the way, from which that glare of light proceeds, and 
there may be evening service for the ladies thrice a week, 
or oftener. For the young gentlemen, there is the counting- 
house, the store, the bar-room : the latter, as you may see 
through these windows, pretty full. Hark ! to the clinking 
sound of hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool 
gurgling of the pounded bits, as, in the process of mixing, 
they are poured from glass to glass ! No amusements ? 
What are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong 
drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible variety 
of twist, doing, but amusing themselves ? What are the 
fifty newspapers, which those precocious urchins are bawling 
down the street, and which are kept filed within, what are 
they but amusements ? Not vapid waterish amusements, but 
good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard 
names ; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting 
Devil did in Spain ; pimping and pandering for all degrees 
of vicious taste, and gorging with coined lies the most vora- 
cious maw ; imputing to every man in public life the coarsest 
and the vilest motives ; scaring away from the stabbed and 
prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience and 
good deeds ; and setting on, with yell and whistle, and the 
clapi)ing of foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst bii'ds of 
prey. — No amusements ! 

Let us go on again ; and passing this wilderness of an 
hotel with stores about its base, like some Continental 
theatre, or the London Opera House shorn of its colonnade, 
plunge into the Five Points. But it is needful, first, that we 
take as our escort these two heads of the police, whom you 
would know for sharp and well-trained oincers if you met 



272 AMERICAN NOTES 

tliem in the Great Desert. So true it is, that certain pur- 
suits, wherever carried on, will stamp men with the same 
character. These two might have been begotten, born, and 
bred, in Bow Street. 

We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day ; 
but of other kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretched- 
ness, and vice, are rife enough where we are going now. 

This is the place, these narrow ways, diverging to the right 
and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such 
lives as are led here, bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. 
The coarse and bloated faces at the doors, have counterparts 
at home, and all the wide world over. Debauchery has made 
the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams 
are tumbling doTVTi, and how the patched and broken windows 
seem to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken 
frays. Many of those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder 
why their masters walk upright in lieu of going on all-fours ? 
and why they talk instead of grunting ? 

So far, nearly every house is a low tavern ; and on the bar- 
room walls, are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen 
Victoria of England, and the American Eagle. Among the 
pigeon-holes that hold the bottles, are pieces of plate-glass 
and coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste for 
decoration, even here. And as seamen frequent these haunts, 
there are maritime pictures by the dozen : of partings between 
sailors and their lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad, 
and his Black-Eyed Susan ; of Will Watch, the Bold Smug- 
gler ; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and the like : on which the 
painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington to boot, 
rest in as strange companionship, as on most of the scenes 
that are enacted in their wondering presence. 

What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts 
us?' A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are 
attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies 
beyond this tottering flight of steps, tliat creak beneath our 
tread ! — a miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and 
destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a 
wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man : his elbows on his 
knees : his forehead hidden in his hands. " What ails that 
man?" asks the foremost officer. ** Fever," he sullenly 
replies, without looking up. Conceive the fancies of a fevered 
brain, in such a place as this ! 



FOR GENERAL CIRCU^TION. 273 

Ascend these pitcli-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on 
the trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this 
wolfish den, where neither ray of light nor breath of air 
apx^ears to come. A negro lad, startled from his sleep by the 
officer's voice — he knows it well — but comforted by his assur- 
ance that he has not come on business, officiously bestirs himself 
to Hght a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and 
shows great mounds of dusky rags upon the ground ; then 
dies away and leaves a denser darkness than before, if there 
can be degrees in such extremes. He stumbles down the 
stairs and presently comes back, shading a flaring taper with 
his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be astir, and 
rise slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negTO 
women, waking from their sleep : their white teeth chattering, 
and their brio-ht eves g'listenino* and winking- on all sides with 
surprise and fear, like the countless repetition of one astonished 
Afiican face in some strange mirror. 

Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are 
traps and pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted 
as ourselves) into the housetop ; where the bare beams and 
rafters meet over-head, and calm night looks down through 
the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one of these 
cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah ! They have 
a charcoal fire within ; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or 
flesh, so close they gather round the brazier; and vapours 
issue forth that blind and suffocate. From every corner, as 
you glance about you in these dark retreats, some figure crawls 
half-awakened, as if the judgment-hour were near at hand, 
and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where 
dogs would howl to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off 
to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of 
better lodgings. 

Here too ai*e lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee- deep, 
under-ground chambers, where they dance and game ; the 
walls bedecked with rough designs of ships, and forts, and 
flags, and American Eagles out of number : ruined houses, 
open to the street, whence, through wide gaps in the walls, 
other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the world of vice 
and misery had nothing else to show : hideous tenements 
which take their name from robbery and miu'der ; all that is 
loathsome, drooping, and decayed is here. 

Our leader has his hand upon the latch of " Almack's," 

T 



274 AMERICAN NOTES 

and calls to us from the bottom of tlie steps ; for the assembly- 
room, of the Five-Point fashionables is approached by a descent. 
Shall we go in ? It is but a moment. 

Heyday ! the landlady of Almack's thrives ! A buxom fat 
mulatto woman, with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily 
ornamented with a handkerchief of many colours. Nor is 
the landlord much behind her in his finery, being attired in 
a smart blue jacket, like a ship's steward, with a thick gold 
ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming 
golden watch-guard. How glad he is to see us ! What will 
we please to call for ? A dance ? It shall be done directly, 
sir : "a, regular break-down." 

The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plaj^s the 
tambourine, stamp upon the boarding of the small raised 
orchestra in which they sit, and play a lively measure. Five 
or six couple come upon the floor, marshalled by a lively 
young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and the greatest 
dancer kno^^Ti. He never leaves off making queer faces, and 
is the delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear inces- 
santly. Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, 
with large, black, drooping eyes, and head-gear after the 
fashion of the hostess, who are as shy, or feign to be, as 
though they never danced before, and so look down before 
the visitors, that their partners can see nothing but the long 
Cringed lashes. 

But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long 
as he likes to the opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, 
and all are so long about it that the sport begins to languish, 
when suddenly the lively hero dashes in to the rescue. 
Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and nail ; 
there is new energy in the tamboui-ine ; new laughter in the 
dancers ; new smiles in the landlady ; new confidence in the 
landlord ; new brightness in the very candles. Single shuffle, 
double shuffle, cut and cross-cut : snapping his fingers, rolling 
his ej'es, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his 
legs in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing 
but the man's fingers on the tambourine ; dancing with two 
left legs, two right legs, two wooden legs, two wire legs, two 
spring legs — all sorts of legs and no legs — what is this to 
him ? And in what walk of life, or dance of life, does man 
ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, 
when, having danced his piu*tner off her feet, and himself 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 275 

too, lie finishes by leaping gloriously on tlie bar-counter, and 
calling for something to drink, with the chuckle of a million 
of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one inimitable sound ! 

The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the 
stifling atmosphere of the houses; and now, as we emerge 
into a broader street, it blows upon us with a purer breath, 
and the stars look bright again. Here are The Tombs once 
more. The city watch-house is a part of the building. It 
follows naturally on the sights we have just left. Let us see 
that, and then to bed. 

What ! do you thrust your common offenders against the 
police discipline of the town, into such holes as these ? Do 
men and women, against whom no crime is proved, lie here 
all night in perfect darkness, surrounded by the noisome 
vapours which encircle that flagging lamp you light us with, 
and breathing this filthy and offensive stench ! Why, such 
indecent and disgusting dungeons as these cells, would bring 
disgrace upon the most despotic empire in the world ! Look 
at them, man — ^you, who see them every night, and keep the 
keys. Do you see what they are ? Do you know how drains 
are made below the streets, and wherein these human sewers 
differ, except in being always stagnant ? 

Well, he don't know. He has had five-and-twenty young 
women locked up in this very cell at one time, and yoa'd 
hardly realise what handsome faces there were among 'em. 

In God's name ! shut the door upon the wretched creature 
who is in it now, and put its screen before a place quite 
unsurpassed in aU the vice, neglect, and devilry, of the worst 
old town in Europe. 

Are people really left all night, untried, in those black 
sties ? — Every night. The watch is set at seven in the 
evening. The magistrate opens his court at five in the 
morning. That is the earliest hour at which the first prisoner 
can be released ; and if an officer appear against him, he is 
not taken out till nine o'clock or ten. — But if any one among 
them die in the interval, as one man did, not long ago ? 
Then he is half-eaten by the rats in an hour's time ; as that 
man was ; and there an end. 

What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing 
of wheels, and shouting in the distance ? A fire. And what 
that deep red light in the opposite direction ? Another fire. 
And what these charred and blackened walls we stand before? 



276 AMERICAN NOTES 

A dwelling wliere a fii^e has been. It was more tlian hinted, 
in an official report, not long ago, that some of these confla- 
grations were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and 
enterprise found a field of exertion, even in flames : but be 
this as it may, there was a fire last night, there are two to- 
night, and you may lay an even wager there mil be at least 
one, to-morrow. So, carrying that with us for our comfort, 
let us say. Good night, and cHmb up- stairs to bed. 

One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to 
the. difierent public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode 
Island : I forget which. One of them is a Lunatic Asylum. 
The building is handsome ; and is remarkable for a spacious 
and elegant staircase. The whole structure is not yet 
finished, but it is already one of considerable size and extent, 
and is capable of accommodating a very large number of 
patients. 

I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspec- 
tion of this charity. The different wards might have been 
cleaner and better ordered ; I saw nothing of that salutary 
system which had impressed me so favourably elsewhere ; and 
everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air, which was 
very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long 
dishevelled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous 
laugh and pointed finger ; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, 
the gloomy picking of the hands and lips, and munching of 
the nails : there they were all, without disguise, in naked 
ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a bare, dull, 
dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but the 
empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, 
they told me, on committing suicide. If anything could have 
strengthened her in her resolution, it would certainly have 
been the insupportable monotony of such an existence. 

The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries 
were filled, so shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the 
ehortest limits, and declined to see that portion of the building 
in which the refractory and violent were under closer restraint. 
I have no doubt that the gentleman who presided over this 
establishment at the time I write of, was competent to manage 
it, and had done all in his power to promote its usefidness : 
but will it be believed that the miserable strife of Party 
feeling is carried even into this sad refuge of afllicted and 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 277 

degraded humanity ? "Will it be believed that the eyes which 
are to watch over and control the wanderings of minds on 
which the most dreadful visitation to which our nature is 
exposed has fallen, must wear the glasses of some wretched 
side in Politics ? Will it be believed that the governor of 
such a house as this, is appointed, and deposed, and changed 
perpetually, as Parties fluctuate and vary, and as their 
despicable weathercocks are blo'UTi this way or that? A 
hundi-ed times in every week, some new most paltry exhibi- 
tion of that narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit, which 
is the Simoom of America, sickening and blighting everything 
of wholesome life within its reach, was forced upon my notice ; 
but I never turned my back upon it with feelings of such 
deep disgust and measureless contempt, as when I crossed 
the threshold of this madliouse. 

At a short distance from this building is another called the 
Alms House, that is to say, the workhouse of New York. 
This is a large institution also : lodging, I beKeve, when I 
was there, nearly a thousand poor. It was badly ventilated, 
and badly lighted ; was not too clean ; and impressed me, on 
the whole, very uncomfortably. But it must be remembered 
that New York, as a great emporium of commerce, and as a 
place of general resort, not only from all parts of the States, 
but fi:om most parts of the world, has always a large pauper 
population to provide for ; and labours, therefore, under 
peculiar difficulties in this respect. Nor must it be forgotten 
that New York is a large town, and that in all large towns a 
vast amount of good and evil is intermixed and jumbled up 
together. 

In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young 
orphans are nursed and bred. I did not see it, but I believe 
it is well conducted ; and I can the more easily credit it, from 
knowing how mindful they usually are, in America, of that 
beautiful passage in the Litany which remembers all sick 
persons and young children. 

I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat 
belonging to the Island Jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, 
who were dressed in a striped uniform of black and buff, in 
which they looked like faded tigers. They took me, by the 
same conveyance, to the Jail itself. 

It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on 
the plan I have ali*eady described. I was glad to hear this, 



278 AMERICAN NOTES 

for it is Tinquestionably a very indifferent one. The most la 
made, however, of the means it possesses, and it is as well 
regulated as such a place can be. 

The women worked in covered sheds erected for that pur- 
pose. If I remember right, there are no shops for the men, 
but be that as it may, the greater part of them labour in 
certain stone-quarries near at hand. The day being very wet 
indeed, this labour was suspended, and the prisoners were in 
their cells. Imagine these cells, some two or three hundred 
in number, and in every one a man locked up ; this one at 
his door for air, with his hands thrust through the grate ; 
this one in bed (in the middle of the day, remember) ; and 
this one flung do"v\m in a heap upon the ground, with his 
head against the bars, like a wild beast. Make the rain pour 
down, outside, in torrents. Put the everlasting stove in the 
midst ; hot, and suffocating, and vaporous as a witch's caul- 
dron. Add a collection of gentle odours, such as would arise 
from a thousand mildewed umbrellas, wet through, and a 
thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen — and there 
is the prison, as it was that day. 

The prison for the State at Sing Sing, is, on the other 
hand, a model jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe, the 
largest and best examples of the silent system. 

In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute: 
an Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, 
male and female, black and white, without distinction ; to 
teach them useful trades, apprentice them to respectable 
masters, and make them worthy members of society. Its 
design, it will be seen, is similar to that at Boston ; and it is 
a no less meritorious and admirable establishment. A suspi- 
cion crossed my mind during my inspection of this noble 
charity, whether the superintendent had quite sufficient 
knowledge of the world and worldly characters ; and whether 
he did not commit a great mistake in treating some yoimg 
girls, who were to all intents and purposes, by their years 
and their past lives, women, as though they were little chil- 
dren ; wliich certainly had a ludicrous effect in my eyes, and, 
or I am much mistaken, in theirs also. As the Institution, 
however, is always under the vigilant examination of a 
body of gentlemen of great intelligence and experience, it 
cannot fail to be well conducted ; and whether I am right or 
wrong in this slight particular, is unimportant to its deserts 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 279 

and character, which, it would be difficult to estimate too 
highly. 

In addition to these establishments, there are in New York, 
excellent hospitals and schools, literary institutions and 
libraries ; an admirable fire department (as indeed it should 
be, having constant practice), and charities of every sort and 
kind. In the suburbs there is a spacious cemetery ; unfinished 
yet, but every day improving. The saddest tomb I saw there 
was '' The Strangers' Grave. Dedicated to the difi'erent hotels 
in this city." 

There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park 
and the Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, 
and are, I grieve to write it, generally deserted. The third, 
the Olympic, is a tiny show-box for vaudevilles and bur- 
lesques. It is singularly well conducted by Mr. Mitchell, a 
comic actor of great quiet humour and originality, who is 
well remembered and esteemed by London play-goers. I am 
happy to report of this deserving gentleman, that his benches 
are usually well filled, and that his theatre rings with 
merriment every night. I had almost forgotten a small 
summer theatre, called Niblo's, with gardens and open air 
amusements attached ; but I believe it is not exempt from 
the general depression under which Theatrical Property, 
or what is humorously called by that name, unfortunately 
labours. 

The country round New York is surpassingly and exqui- 
sitely picturesque. The climate, as I have already intimated, 
is somewhat of the warmest. What it would be, without 
the sea breezes which come from its beautiful Bay in the even- 
ing time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a fever 
by inquiring. 

The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of 
Boston ; here and there, it may be, with a greater infusion 
of the mercantile spirit, but generally polished and refined, 
and always most hospitable. The houses and tables are 
elegant ; the hours later and more rakish ; and there is, 
perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in reference to appear- 
ances, and the display of wealth and costly living. The 
ladies are singularly beautiful. 

Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing 
a passage home in the George Washington packet ship, which 
was advertised to sail in June: that being the month iu 



280 AMERICAN NOTES 

which I had determined, if prevented by no accident in the 
course of my ramblings, to leave America, 

I never thought that going back to England, returning to 
all who are dear to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly 
grown to be part of my nature, I could have felt so much 
sorrow as I endured, when I parted at last, on board this 
ship, with the friends who had accompanied me from this 
city. I never thought the name of any place, so far away, 
and so lately known, could ever associate itself in my mind 
with the crowd of affectionate remembrances that now cluster 
about it. There are those in this city who would brighten, 
to me, the darkest winter-day that ever glimmered and went 
out in Lapland ; and before whose presence even Home grew 
dim, when they and I exchanged that painful word which 
mingles with our every thought and deed ; which haunts oui 
cradle-heads in infancy, and closes up the vista of our lives 
in age. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 281 



CHAPTER VII. 

PHILADELPHIA, AND ITS SOLITAHT PEISON. 

The journey from New York to Philadelphia is made by 
railroad, and two ferries ; and usually occupies between five 
and six hours. It was a fine evening when we were passengers 
in the train : and watching the bright sunset from a little 
window near the door by which we sat, my attention was 
attracted to a remarkable appearance issuing from the windows 
of the gentlemen's car immediately in front of us, which I 
supposed for some time was occasioned by a number of indus- 
trious persons inside, ripping open feather-beds, and giving 
the feathers to the wind. At length it occurred it me that 
they were only spitting, which was indeed the case ; though 
how any number of passengers which it was possible for that 
car to contain, could have maintained such a playful and 
incessant shower of expectoration, I am still at a loss to under- 
stand : notwithstanding the experience in all salivatory phe- 
nomena which I afterwards acquired. 

I made acquaintance, on this journey, with a mild and 
modest young quaker, who opened the discourse by informing 
me, in a grave whisper, that his grandfather was the inventor 
of cold-drawn castor oil. I mention the circumstance here, 
thinking it probable that this is the first occasion on which 
the valuable medicine in question was ever used as a conversa- 
tional aperient. 

We reached the city late that night. Looking out of my 
chamber window, before going to bed, I saw, on the opposite 
side of the way, a handsome building of white marble, which 
had a mournful ghost-like aspect, dreary to behold. I attri- 
buted this to the sombre influence of the night, and on rising 
in the morning looked out again, expecting to see its steps 
and portico thronged with groups of people passing in and 
out. The door was still tight shut, however ; the same cold 
cheerless air prevailed; and the building looked as if the 



282 AMERICAN NOTES 

marble statue of Don Guzman could alone^ have any business 
to transact within its gloomy walls. I hastened to inquire its 
name and purpose, and then my surprise vanished. It was 
the Tomb of many fortunes ; the Great Catacomb of invest- 
ment ; the memorable United States Bank. 

The stoppage of this bank, with all its ruinous consequences, 
had cast (as I was told on every side) a gloom on Philadelphia, 
under the depressing effect of which it yet laboured. It 
certainly did seem rather dull and out of spirits. 

It is a handsome city, but distractingly regular. After 
walking about it for an hour or two, I felt that I would have 
given the world for a crooked street. The collar of my 
coat appeared to stiffen, and the brim of my hat to expand, 
beneath its quakerly influence. My hair shrunk into a sleek 
short crop, my hands folded themselves upon my breast of their 
own calm accord, and thoughts of taking lodgings in Mark 
Lane over against the Market Place, and of making a large 
fortune by speculations in corn came over me involuntarily. 

Philadelphia is most bountifully provided with fresh water, 
which is showered and jerked about, and turned on, and 
poured off, everywhere. The Waterworks, which are on a 
height- near the city, are no less ornamental than useful, being 
tastefully laid out as a public garden, and kept in the best 
and neatest order. The river is dammed at this point, and 
forced by its own power into certain high tanks or reservoirs, 
whence the whole city, to the top stories of the houses, is 
supplied at a very trifling expense. 

There are various public institutions. Among them a most 
excellent Hospital — a quaker establishment, but not sectarian 
in the great benefits it confers ; a quiet, quaint old Library, 
named after Franklin ; a handsome Exchange and Post Office ; 
and so forth. In connection with the quaker Hos^Dital, there 
is a picture by West, which is exhibited for the benefit of the 
funds of the institution. The subject is, our Saviour healing 
the sick, and it is, perliaps, as favorable a specimen of the 
master as can be seen anywhere. Whether this be high or 
low praise, depends upon the reader's taste. 

In the same room, there is a very characteristic and life- 
like portrait by Mr. Sully, a distinguished American artist. 

My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of 
its society I greatly liked. Treating of its general character- 
istics, I should be disposed to say tliat it is more provincial than 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 283 

Boston or New York, and that there is afloat in tlie fair city, 
an assumption of taste and criticism, savouiing rather of 
those genteel discussions upon the same themes, in connection 
with Shakspeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read 
in the Vicar of Wakefield. Near the city, is a most splendid 
unfinished marble structure for the Girard College, founded 
by a deceased gentleman of that name and of enormous wealth, 
which, if completed according to the original design, will be 
perhaps the richest edifice of modern times. But the bequest 
is involved in legal disputes, and pending them the work 
has stopped; so that like many other great undertakings in 
America, even this is rather going to be done one of these 
days, than doing now. 

In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern 
Penitentiary : conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of 
Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless 
solitary confinement. I beKeve it, in its effects, to be cruel 
and wrong. 

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, 
and meant for reformation ; but I am persuaded that those 
who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those bene- 
volent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know 
what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men 
are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and 
agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, 
inflicts upon the sufferers ; and in guessing at it myself, and 
in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, 
and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only 
the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance 
in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and 
which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. 
I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the 
brain, to be immeasurably worse than any tortui'e of the body; 
and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to 
the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh ; because its 
wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that 
human ears can hear ; therefore I the more denounce it, as a 
secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused 
up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself, whether, 
if I had the power of saying " Yes " or " No," I would allow 
it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment 
were short ; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no rewards 



284 AMERICAN NOTES 

or honors could I walk a happy man beneath the open sty 
by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the con- 
sciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, 
no matter what, lay suffering this unlvnown punishment in 
his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the 
least deQTee. 

I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen, 
officially connected with its management, and passed the day 
in going from cell to cell, and talking with the inmates. 
Every facility was afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could 
suggest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from my view, 
and every piece of information that I sought, was openly and 
frankly given. The perfect order of the building cannot be 
praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who are 
immediately concerned in the administration of the system, 
there can be no kind of question. 

Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is 
a spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive 
gate, we pursued the path before us to its other termination, 
and passed into a large chamber, from which seven long 
passages radiate. On either side of each, is a long, long row 
of low cell doors, with a certain number over every one. 
Above, a gallery of cells like those below, except that they 
have no narrow yard attached (as those in the groimd tier 
have), and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of 
these, is supposed to compensate for the absence of so much 
air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip attached to 
each of the others, in an hour's time every day ; and therefore 
every prisoner in this upper story has two cells, adjoining, 
and communicating with, each other. 

Standing at the central point, and looking down these 
di'eary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is 
awful. Occasionally there is a drowsy sound fi'om some lone 
weaver's shuttle, or shoemaker's last, but it is stifled by the 
thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make 
the general stillness more profound. Over the head and face 
of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a 
black hood is drawn ; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of 
the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is 
led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, imtil 
his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He never hears 
of wife or childi'en ; home or friends ; the life or death of any 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 286 

single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that 
exception, he never looks upon a human countenance, or hears 
a human voice. He is a man buried alive ; to be dug out in 
the slow round of years; and in the meantime dead to 
everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair. 

His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, 
even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is 
a number over his cell- door, and in a book of which the 
governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor 
another : this is the index to his history. Beyond these 
pages the prison has no record of his existence : and though 
he live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no 
means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part 
of the building it is situated ; what kind of men there are 
about him ; whether in the long winter nights there are 
living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great 
jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him 
and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors. 

Every cell has double doors : the outer one of sturdy oak, 
the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through 
which his food is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and 
pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other 
books, provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. 
His razor, plate, and can, and basin, hang upon the wall, or 
shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every 
cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, 
his bedstead turns up against the wall, and leaves more space 
for him to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there ; 
and there he labours, sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons 
as they change, and grows old. 

The first man I saw was seated at his loom, at work. 
He had been there six years, and was to remain, I think, 
three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen 
goods, but even after this long imprisonment denied his guilt, 
and said he had been hardly dealt by. It was his second 
offence. 

He stopped his work when we went in, took off his 
spectacles, and answered freely to everything that was said to 
him, but always with a strange kind of pause fii-st, and in e 
low, thoughtful voice. He wore a paper hat of his own 
making, and was pleased to have it noticed and commended. 
He had very ingeniously manufactured a sort of Dutch clock 



286 AMERICAN NOTES 

from some disregarded odds and ends ; and his vinegar-bottle 
served for tlie pendulum. Seeing me interested in this 
contrivance, lie looked up at it with a great deal of pride, and 
said that he had been thinking of improving it, and that he 
hoped the hammer and a little piece of broken glass beside it 
*' would play music before long." He had extracted some 
colours from the yarn with which he worked, and painted a 
few poor figures on the wall. One, of a female, over the 
door, he called " The Lady of the Lake." 

He smiled as I looked at these contrivances to wile away 
the time ; but, when I looked from them to him, I saw that 
his lip trembled, and could have counted the beating of his 
heart. I forget how it came about, but some allusion was 
made to his having a wife. He shook his head at the word, 
turned aside, and covered his face with his hands. 

" But you are resigned now ! " said one of the gentlemen 
after a short pause, during which he had resumed his former 
manner. He answered with a sigh that seemed quite reckless 
in its hopelessness, " Oh jea, oh yes ! I am resigned to it." 
" And are a better man, you think ? " '' Well, I hope so : 
I 'm sure I hope I may be." " And time goes pretty quickly ? * 
" Time is very long, gentlemen, within these four walls ! " 

He gazed about him — Heaven only knows how wearily !— 
as he said these words ; and in the act of doing so, fell into a 
sti'ange stare as if he had forgotten something. A moment 
afterwards he sighed heavily, put on his spectacles, and went 
about his work again. 

In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five 
years' imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just 
expired. With colours procured in the same manner, he had 
painted every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. 
He had laid out the few feet of ground, behind, with exquisite 
neatness, and had made a little bed in the centre, that looked 
by the bye like a grave. The taste and ingenuity he had 
displayed in everything were most extraordinary ; and yet a 
more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be 
difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn 
affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled for him ; and 
when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one of tlie 
visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling hands nervously 
clutcliiug at his coat to detain him, whether there was no 
hope of his dismal sentence being commuted, the spectacle 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 287 

wag really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any 
kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness 
of this man. 

In a third ceU was a taU strong black, a burglar, working 
at his proper trade of making screws and the like. His time 
was nearly out. He was not only a very dexterous thief, but 
was notorious for his boldness and hardihood, and for the 
number of his previous convictions. He entertained us with 
a long account of his achievements, which he narrated with 
such infinite relish, that he actually seemed to lick his lips 
as he told us racy anecdotes of stolen plate, and of old 
ladies whom he had watched as they sat at windows in 
silver spectacles (he had plainly had an eye to their metal, 
even frum the other side of the street) and had afterwards 
robbed. This feUow, upon the slightest encouragement, 
would have mingled with his professional recollections the 
most detestable cant; but I am very much mistaken if he 
could have surpassed the unmitigated hypocrisy with which 
he declared that he blessed the day on which he came into 
that prison, and that he never would commit another robbery 
as long as he lived. 

There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence, to 
keep rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in con- 
sequence, they called to him at the door to come out into the 
passage. He compHed of course, and stood shading his 
haggard face in the unwonted . sunlight of the great window, 
looking as wan and unearthly as if he had been summoned 
from the grave. He had a white rabbit in his breast ; and 
when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole 
back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after 
it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in what 
respect the man was the nobler animal of the two. 

There was an English thief, who had been there but a few 
days out of seven years : a villanous, low-browed, thin-lipped 
feUow, with a white-face ; who had as yet no relish for 
visitors, and who, but for the additional penalty, would have 
gladly stabbed me with his shoemaker's knife. There was 
another German who had entered the jail but yesterday, and 
who started from his bed when we looked in, and pleaded, in 
his broken English, very hard for work. There was a poet, 
who after doing two days' work in every four-and-twenty 
hours, one for himself and one for the prison, wrote verses 



288 AMERICAN NOTES 

about ships (he was by trade a mariner), and the "madden- 
ing wine-cup," and his friends at home. There were very 
many of them. Some reddened at the sight of visitors, and 
some turned very pale. Some two or three had prisoner 
nurses with them, for they were very sick, and one, a fat old 
negro, whose leg had been taken off within the jail, had for 
his attendant a classical scholar and an accomplished sur- 
geon, himself a prisoner likewise. Sitting upon the stairs, 
engaged in some slight work, was a pretty coloured boy. 
" Is there no refuge for young criminals in Philadelphia, 
then?" said I. "Yes, but only for white children." Noble 
aristocracy in crime ! 

There was a sailor who had been there upwards of eleven 
years, and who in a few months' time would be free. Eleven 
years of solitary confinement ! 

" I am verj'- glad to hear your time is nearly out." "V^Tiat 
does he say? Nothing. Why does he stare at his hands, 
and pick the flesh upon his fingers, and raise his eyes for an 
instant, every now and then, to those bare walls which have 
seen his head turn grey ? It is a way he has sometimes. 

Does he never look men in the face, and does he always 
pluck at those hands of his, as though he were bent on part- 
ing skin and bone ? It is his humour : nothing more. 

It is his humour, too, to say that he does not look forward 
to going out ; that he is not glad the time is drawing near ; 
that he did look forward to it once, but that was very 
long ago ; that he has lost all care for everjiihing. It is his 
humour to be a helpless, crushed, and broken man. And, 
Heaven be his witness that he has his humour thoroughly 
gratified ! 

There were three young women in adjoining cells, all con- 
victed at the same time of a conspiracy to rob their prose- 
cutor. In the silence and solitude of their lives they had 
grown to be quite beautiful. Their looks were very sad, 
and might have moved the sternest visitor to tears, but not 
to that kind of sorrow which the contemplation of the men 
awakens. One was a young girl ; not twenty, as I recollect ; 
whose snow-white room was hung with the work of some 
former prisoner, and upon whose downcast face the sun in 
all its splendour shone down through the high chink in the 
wall, wliere one narrow strip of bright blue sky was visible. 
She was very penitent and quiet ; had come to be resigned, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 289 

she said (and I believe her) ; and had a mind at peace. 
" In a word, you are happy here ? " said one of my com- 
panions. She struggled — she did struggle very hard — to 
answer, Yes : but raising her eyes, and meeting that glimpse 
of freedom over-head, she burst into tears, and said, '' She 
tried to be ; she uttered no complaint ; but it was natural 
that she should sometimes long to go out of that one cell : 
she could not help that," she sobbed, poor thing ! 

I went fi'om cell to cell that day ; and every face I saw, or 
word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in. 
all its painfulness. But let me pass them by, for one, more 
pleasant, glance of a prison on the same plan which I after- 
wards saw at Pittsburgh. 

When I had gone over that, in the same manner, I asked 
the governor if he had any person in his charge who was 
shortly going out. He had one, he said, whose time was up 
next day ; but he had only been a prisoner two years. 

Two years ! I looked back through two years in my own 
life — out of jail, prosperous, happy, surrounded by blessings, 
comforts, and good fortune — and thought how wide a gap it 
was, and how long those two years passed in solitary captivity 
would have been. I have the face of this man, who was 
going to be released next day, before me now. It is almost 
more memorable in its happiness than the other faces in their 
misery. How easy and how natural it was for him to say 
that the system was a good one ; and that the time went 
*' pretty quick — considering ;" and that when a man once felt 
he had offended the law, and must satisfy it, " he got along, 
somehow :'' and so forth ! 

" What did he call you back to say to you, in that strange 
flutter ? " I asked of my conductor, when he had locked the 
door and joined me in the passage. 

" Oh ! That he was afraid the soles of his boots were not 
fit for walking, as they were a good deal worn when he came 
in ; and that he would thank me very much to have them 
mended, ready." 

Those boots had been taken off his feet, and put away with 
the rest of his clothes, two years before ! 

I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted 
themselves immediately before going out ; adding that I pre- 
sumed they trembled very much. 

"Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer — 



290 AMERICAN NOTES 

" though tliey do quiver — as a complete derangement of the 
nervous system. They can't sign their names to the book ; 
sometimes can't even hold the pen ; look about 'em without 
appearing to know why, or where they are ; and sometimes 
get up and sit down again, twenty times in a minute. This 
is when they 're in the office, where they are taken with the 
hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the 
gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other : 
not knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if 
they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against 
the fence, they 're so bad : — ^but they clear off in course of 
time." 

As I walked among these solitary cells, and looked at the 
faces of the men within them, I tried to picture to myself the 
thoughts and feelings natural to their condition. I imagined 
the hood just taken off, and the scene of their captivity dis- 
closed to them in all its dismal monotony. 

At first, the man is stunned. His confinement is a hideous 
vision ; and his old life a reality. He throws himself upon 
his bed, and lies there abandoned to despair. By degrees the 
insupportable solitude and barrenness of the place rouses him 
from this stupor, and when the trap in his grated door is 
opened, he humbly begs and prays for work. " Give me some 
work to do, or I shall go raving mad ! " 

He has it ; and by fits and starts appKes himself to labour ; 
but every now and then there comes upon him a burning sense 
of the years that must be wasted in that stone coffin, and an 
agony so piercing in the recollection of those who are hidden 
from his view and knowledge, that he starts from his seat, 
and striding up and down the narrow room with both hands 
clasped on his uplifted head, hears spirits tempting him to 
beat his brains out on the wall. 

Again he falls upon his bed, and lies there moaning. 
Suddenly he starts up, wondering whether any other man is 
near ; whether there is another cell like that on either side of 
him : and listens keenly. 

There is no sound, but other prisoners may be near 
for all that. He remembers to have heard once, when he 
little thought of coming here himself, that the cells were so 
constructed that the prisoners could not hear each other, 
though the officers could hear them. Where is the nearest 
man — upon the right, or on the left ? or is there one in both 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 291 

directions ? Where is lie sitting now — witli his face to the 
light ? or is he walking to and fro ? How is he di-essed ? 
Has he been here long ? Is he much worn away ? Is he 
very white and spectre-like ? Does he think of his neighbour 
too? 

Scarcely venturing to breathe, and listening while he 
thinks, he conjures up a figure with his back towards him, 
and imagines it moving about in this next cell. He has no 
idea of the face, but he is certain of the dark form of a stooping 
man. In the cell upon the other side, he puts another figure, 
whose face is hidden from him also. Day after day, and 
often when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he thinks 
of these two men until he is almost distracted. He never 
changes them. There they are always as he first imagined 
them — an old man on the right ; a younger man upon the 
left — whose hidden features torture him to death, and have a 
mystery that makes him tremble. 

The weary days pass on with solemn pace, like mourners 
at a funeral ; and slowly he begins to feel that the white walls 
of the cell have something dreadful in them : that their colour 
is horrible : that their smooth surface chills his blood : that 
there is one hateful corner which torments him. Every morning 
when he wakes, he hides his head beneath the coverlet, and 
shudders to see the ghastly ceiling looking down upon him. 
The blessed light of day itself peeps in, an ugly phantom 
face, through the unchangeable crevice which is his prison 
window. 

By slow but sure degrees, the terrors of that hateful corner 
Bwell until they beset him at all times ; invade his rest, make 
his dreams hideous, and his nights dreadful. At first, he took 
a strange dislike to it : feeling as though it gave birth in his 
brain to something of corresponding shape, which ought not 
to be there, and racked his head with pains. Then he began 
to fear it, then to dream of it, and of men whispering its name 
and pointing to it. Then he could not bear to look at it, nor 
yet to turn his back upon it. Now, it is every night the 
lurking-place of a ghost : a shadow : — a silent something, 
horrible to see, but whether bird, or beast, or mufiled hiiman 
shape, he cannot tell. 

When he is in his cell by day, he fears the little yard 
without. When he is in the yard, he di-eads to re-enter the 
cell. When night comes, there stands the phantom in the 

u2 



292 AMERICAN NOTES 

comer. If lie have tlie courage to stand in its place, and 
drive it out (he had once : being* desperate), it broods upon 
his bed. In the twilight, and always at the same hour, a 
voice calls to him by name ; as the darkness thickens, his 
Loom begins to live ; and even that, his comfort, is a hideous 
figure, watching him till daybreak. 

Again, by slow degrees, these horrible fancies depart from 
him one by one ; returning sometimes, unexpectedly, but at 
longer intervals, and in less alarming shapes He has talked 
upon religious matters with the gentleman who visits him, 
and has read his Bible, and has written a prayer upon his 
slate, and hung it up as a kind of protection, and an assurance 
of Heavenly companionship. He dreams now, sometimes, of 
his children or his wife, but is sure that they are dead, or have 
deserted him. He is easily moved to tears ; is gentle, sub- 
missive, and broken-spirited. Occasionally, the old agony 
comes back : a very little thing will revive it ; even a familiar 
sound, or the scent of summer flowers in the air ; but it does 
not last long, now : for the world without, has come to be the 
vision, and this solitary life, the sad reality. 

If his term of imprisonment be short — I mean compara- 
tively, for short it cannot be — the last half year is almost 
worse than all ; for then he thinks the prison wiU take fire 
and he be burnt in the ruins, or that he is doomed to die 
•within the walls, or that he will be detained on some false 
charge and sentenced for another term : or that something, no 
matter what, must happen to prevent his going at large. 
And this is natural, and impossible to be reasoned against, 
because, after his long separation from human life, and his 
great suffering, any event will appear to him more probable 
in the contemplation, than the being restored to liberty and 
his fellow-creatures. 

If his period of confinement have been very long, the 
prospect of release, bewilders and confuses him. His broken 
heart may flutter for a moment, when he thinks of the world 
outside, and what it might have been to him in all those lonely 
years, but that is all. The cell-door has been closed too long 
on all its hopes and cares. Better to have hanged him in the 
beginning than bring him to this pass, and send him forth to 
mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more. 

On the haggard face of every man among these prisoners, 
the same expression sat. I know not what to liken it to. It 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 293 

had sometliing of that strained attention wliich we see upon 
the faces of the blind and deaf, mingled with a kind of 
horror, as though they had all been secretly terrified. In 
every little chamber that I entered, and at every grate through 
which I looked, I seemed to see the same appalling coun- 
tenance. It lives in my memory, with the fascination of a 
remarkable picture. Parade before my eyes, a hundi-ed men, 
with one among them newly released from this solitary 
suffering, and I would point him out. 

The faces of the women, as I have said, it humanises and 
refines. Whether this be because of their better nature, 
which is elicited in solitude, or because of their being gentler 
creatures, of greater patience and longer suffering, I do not 
know ; but so it is. That the punishment is nevertheless, to 
my thinking, fully as cruel and as wrong in their case, as in 
that of the men, I need scarcely add. 

My fii-m conviction is that, independent of the mental 
anguish it occasions — an anguish so acute and so tremendous, 
that all imagination of it must fall far short of the reality — 
it wears the mind into a morbid state, which renders it unfit 
for the rough contact and busy action of the world. It is my 
fixed opinion that those who have undergone this punishment, 
MUST pass into society again morall}' unhealthy and diseased. 
There are many instances on record, of men who have chosen, 
or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I 
scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and 
vigorous intellect, where its effect has not become apparent, 
in some disordered train of thought, or some gloomy hallu- 
cination. What monstrous phantoms, bred of despondency 
and doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have stalked 
upon the earth, making creation ugly, and darkening the face 
of Heaven ! 

Suicides are rare among these prisoners : are almost, indeed, 
unknown. But no argument in favour of the sj'^stem, can 
reasonably be deduced fi-om this circumstance, although it is 
very often m-ged. AIL men ^ho have made diseases of the 
mind their study, know perfectly well that such extreme 
depression and despair as will change the whole character, 
and beat down all its powers of elasticity and self-resistance, 
may be at work within a man, and yet stop short of self- 
destruction. This is a common case. 

That it makes the senses duU, and by degrees impairs the 



294 AMERICAN NOTES 

bodily faculties, I am quite sure. I remarked to those who 
were with me in this very establishment at Philadelphia, that 
the criminals who had been there long, were deaf. They, who 
were in the habit of seeing* these men constantly, were per- 
fectly amazed at the idea, which they regarded as groundless 
and fanciful. And yet the very fii^st prisoner to whom they 
appealed — one of their own selection — confirmed my im- 
pression (which was unknown to him) instantly, and said, 
with a genuine air it was impossible to doubt, that he couldn't 
think how it happened, but he was growing very dull of 
hearing. 

That it is a singularly unequal punishment, and affects the 
worst man least, there is no doubt. In its superior efficiency 
as a means of reformation, compared with that other code of 
regulations which allows the prisoners to work in company 
without communicating together, I have not the smallest faith. 
All the instances of reformation that were mentioned to 
me, were of a kind that might have been — and I have no 
doubt whatever, in my own mind, would have been — 
equally well brought about by the Silent System. With 
regard to such men as the negro burglar and the English 
thief, even the most enthusiastic have scarcely any hope of 
their conversion. 

It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome 
or good has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, 
and that "even a dog or any of the more intelligent among 
beasts, would pine, and mope, and rust awaj^, beneath its 
influence, would be in itself a sufficient argument against 
this system. But when we recoUect, in addition, how very 
cruel and severe it is, and that a solitary life is always liable 
to peculiar and distinct objections of a most deplorable nature, 
which have arisen here, and call to mind, moreover, that the 
choice is not between this sj^stem, and a bad or ill-considered 
one, but between it and another which has worked well, and 
is, in its whole design and practice, excellent ; there is surely 
more than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punish- 
ment attended by so little hope or promise, and fi-aught, 
beyond dispute, with such a host of evils. 

As a relief to its contemplation, I will close this chapter 
with a curious story, arising out of the same theme, which 
was related to me, on the occasion of this visit, by some of 
the gentlemen concerned. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULA.TION. 295 

At one of tlie periodical meetings of tlie inspectors of 
this prison, a working man of Philadelphia presented himself 
before the Board, and earnestly requested to be placed in 
solitary confinement. On being asked what motive could 
possibly prompt him to make this strange demand, he an- 
swered that he had an irresistible propensity to get drunk ; 
that he was constantly indulging it, to his great misery and 
ruin ; that he had no power of resistance ; that he wished to 
be put beyond the reach of temptation; and that he could 
think of no better way than this. It was pointed out to 
him, in reply, that the prison was for criminals who had been 
tried and sentenced by the law, and could not be made avail- 
able for any such fanciful purposes ; he was exhorted to 
abstain from intoxicating drinks, as he surely might if he 
would ; and received other very good advice, with which he 
retired, exceedingly dissatisfied with the result of his 
appHcation. 

He came again, and again, and again, and was so very 
earnest and importunate, that at last they took counsel 
together, and said, " He will certainly qualify himself for 
admission, if we reject him any more. Let us shut him up. 
He will soon be glad to go away, and then we shall get rid of 
him." So they made him sign a statement which would 
prevent his ever sustaining an action for false imprisonment, 
to the effect that his incarceration was voluntary, and of his 
own seeking; they requested him to take notice that the 
officer in attendance had orders to release him at any hour 
of the day or night, when he might knock upon his door 
for that purpose ; but desired him to understand, that once 
going out, he would not be admitted any more. These con- 
ditions agreed upon, and he still remaining in the same 
mind, he was conducted to the prison, and shut up in one of 
the cells. 

In this cell, the man, who had not. the firmness to leave a 
glass of liquor standing untasted on a table before him — in 
this cell, in solitary confinement, and working every day at 
his trade of shoemaking, this man remained nearly two 
years. His health beginning to fail at the expu-ation of 
that time, the surgeon recommended that he should work 
occasionally in the garden; and as he liked the notion 
very much, he went about this new occupation with great 
cheerfidness. 



296 AMERICAN NOTES 

He Tras digging here, one siunmer day, very industriously, 
wlien the wicket in the outer gate chanced to be left open ; 
showing, beyond, the well-remembered dusty road and sun- 
burnt fields. The way was as free to him as to any man 
living, but he no sooner raised his head and caught sight of 
it, all shining in the light, than, with the involuntary instinct 
of a prisoner, he cast away his spade, scampered off as fast 
as his legs would carry him, and never once looked back. 



FOE, GENERAL CIECULATION. 297 



CHAPTER YIIL 

WASHINGTON. THE LEGISLATURE. AND THE PRESIDENT'S HOUSE. 

We left Philadelpliia by steamboat, at six o'clock one very 
cold morning, and turned our faces towards WasMngton. 

In the course of tlds day's journey, as on subsequent occa- 
sions, we encountered some Englishmen (small farmers, per- 
haps, or country publicans at home) who were settled in 
America, and were travelling on their own affairs. Of all 
grades and kinds of men that jostle one in the public convey- 
ances of the States, these are often the most intolerable and 
the most insufferable companions. United to every disagree- 
able characteristic that the worst kind of American travellers 
possess, these countrymen of ours display an amount of inso- 
lent conceit and cool assumption of superiority, quite monstrous 
to behold. In the coarse familiarit}^ of their approach, and the 
effrontery of their inquisitiveness (which they are in great 
haste to assert as if they panted to revenge themselves upon 
the decent old restraints of home) they surpass any native 
specimens that came within my range of observation : and I 
often grew so patriotic when I saw and heard them, that I 
would cheerfully have submitted to a reasonable fine, if I could 
have given any other country in the whole world, the honour 
of claiming them for its children. 

As Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco- 
tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without 
any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices 
of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be any- 
thing but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and 
sickening. In all the public places of America, this filthy 
custom is recognised. In the courts of law, the judge has his 
spittoon, the crier his, the witness his, and the prisoner his ; 
while the jurymen and spectators are provided for, as so many 
men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly. 
In the hospitals, the students of medicine are requested, by 



298 AMERICAN NOTES 

notices upon tlie wall, to eject tlieir tobacco juice into the 
boxes provided for that purpose, and not to discolour the 
stairs. In public buildings, visitors are implored, through the 
same agency, to squirt the essence of their quids, or '' plugs," as 
I have heard them called by gentlemen learned in this kind of 
sweetmeat, into the national spittoons, and not about the bases 
of the marble columns. But in some parts, this custom is 
inseparably mixed up with every meal and morning call, and 
with all the transactions of social life. The stranger, who 
follows in the track I took myself, will find it in its full bloom 
and glory, luxuriant in all its alarming recklessness, at Wash- 
ington. And let him not persuade himself (as I once did, to 
my shame), that previous tourists have exaggerated its extent. 
The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot 
be outdone. 

On board this steamboat, there were two young gentlemen, 
with shirt-collars reversed as usual, and armed with very big 
walking-sticks; who planted two seats in the middle of the 
deck, at a distance of some four paces apart ; took out their 
tobacco-boxes; and sat down opposite each other, to chew. 
In less than a quarter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths 
had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of 
yellow rain ; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, 
within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they 
never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. 
This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to 
nausea ; but looking attentively at one of the expectorators, I 
plainly saw that he was young in chewing, and felt inwardly 
uneasy, himself. A glow of delight came over me at this 
discovery ; and as I marked his face turn paler and paler, and 
saw the ball of tobacco in his left cheek, quiver with his sup- 
pressed agony, wliile yet he spat, and chewed, and spat again, 
in emulation of his older friend, I could have fallen on his neck 
and implored him to go on for hours. 

We all sat down to a comfortable breakfast in the cabin 
below, where there was no more hurry or confusion than at 
such a meal in England, and where there was certainly greater 
politeness exhibited than at most of our stage-coach banquets. 
At about nine o'clock we arrived at the raihoad station, and 
went on by the cars. At noon we turned out again, to cross a 
wide river in another steam-boat ; landed at a continuation of 
the railroad on the opposite shore ; and went on by other cars; 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 299 

in wliicli in the course of the next hour or so, we crossed by 
wooden bridges, each a mile in length, two creeks, called 
respectively Great and Little Gunpowder. The water in both 
was blackened with flights of canvas-backed ducks, which are 
most delicious eating, and abound hereabouts at that season 
of the year. 

These bridges are of wood, have no parapet, and are only 
just wide enough for the passage of the trains ; which, in the 
event of the smallest accident, would inevitably be plunged 
into the river. They are startling contrivances, and are most 
agreeable when passed. 

We stopped to dine at Baltimore, and being now in Mary- 
land, were waited on, for the first time, by slaves. The sen- 
sation of exacting any service from human creatures who are 
bought and sold, and being, for the time, a party as it were 
to their condition, is not an enviable one. The institution 
exists, perhaps, in its least repulsive and most mitigated form 
in such a town as this ; but it is slavery ; and though I waa 
with respect to it, an innocent man, its presence filled me with 
a sense of shame and self-reproach. 

After dinner, we went down to the railroad again, and took 
our seats in the cars for Washington. Being rather early, 
those men and boys who happened to have nothing particular 
to do, and were curious in foreigners, came (according to 
custom) round the carriage in which I sat ; let down all the 
windows ; thrust in their heads and shoulders ; hooked them- 
selves on conveniently, by their elbows ; and fell to comparing 
notes on the subject of my personal appearance, with as much 
indifi'erence as if I were a stuffed figure. I never gained so 
much uncompromising information with reference to my own 
nose and eyes, the various impressions wrought by my mouth 
and chin on different minds, and how my head looks when it 
is viewed from behind, as on these occasions. Some gentle- 
men were only satisfied by exercising their sense of touch ; 
and the boys (who are surprisingly precocious in America) 
were seldom satisfied, even by that, but would return to the 
charge over and over again. Many a budding president has 
walked into my room with his cap on his head and his hands 
in his pockets, and stared at me for two whole hours : occa- 
sionally refi-eshing himself with a tweak at his nose, or a 
draught from the water-jug ; or by walking to the windows 
and inviting other boys in the street below, to come up and do 



300 AMERICAN NOTES 

likewise : crying, *' Here he is ! " " Come on ! " " Bring aU 
your brothers I " with other hospitable entreaties of that nature. 

We reached Washington at about half-past six that evening, 
and had upon the way a beautiful view of the Capitol, which 
is a fine building of the Corinthian order, placed upon a noble 
and commanding eminence. Arrived at the hotel ; I saw no 
more of the place that night ; being very tired, and glad to 
get to bed. 

Breakfast over next morning, I walk about the sti'eets for 
an hour or two, and, coming home, throw up the window in 
the front and back, and look out. Here is Washington, fi-esh 
in my mind and under my eye. 

Take the worst parts of the City Road and PentonviUe, or 
the straggling outskirts of Paris, where the houses are 
smallest, preseiwing all their oddities, but especially the small 
shops and dwellings, occupied in PentonviUe (but not in 
Washington) by furniture-brokers, keepers of poor eating- 
houses, and fanciers of birds. Burn the whole down ; build it 
up again in wood and plaster ; widen it a little ; throw in part 
of St. John's Wood ; put green blinds outside all the private 
houses, with a red curtain and a white one in every window; 
plough up all the roads ; plant a great deal of coarse turf in 
every place where it ought not to be ; erect three handsome 
buildings in stone and marble, anywhere, but the more en- 
tirely out of everybody's way the better; call one the Post 
Office, one the Patent Office, and one the Treasury; make it 
scorching hot in the morning, and freezing cold in the afternoon, 
with an occasional tornado of wind and dust ; leave a brick- 
field without the bricks, in all central places where a street 
may naturally be expected : and that's Washington. 

The hotel in which we live, is a long row of small housegi 
fronting on the street, and opening at the back upon a com- 
mon yard, in which hangs a great triangle. Whenever a 
servant is wanted, somebody beats on this triangle from one 
stroke up to seven, according to the number of the house in 
which his presence is required ; and as all the servants are 
always being wanted, and none of them ever come, this en- 
livening engine is in full performance the whole day through. 
Clothes are drying in this same yard ; female slaves, with 
cotton handkerchiefs twisted round their heads, ai'e running to 
and fro on the hotel business ; black waiters cross and recross 
with dishes in their hands ; two great dogs aie playing upon 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 301 

a mound of loose bricks in tlie centre of the little square ; a 
pig is turning up his stomach to the sun, and grunting ''that 's 
comfortable ! " ; and neither the men, nor the women, nor the 
dogs, nor the pig, nor any created creature takes the smallest 
notice of the triangle, which is tingling madly all the time. 

I walk to the front window, and look across the road upon 
a long, straggling row of houses, one story high, terminating, 
nearly opposite, but a little to the left, in a melancholy piece 
of waste ground with frowzy grass, which looks like a small 
piece of country that has taken to drinking, and has quite lost 
itself. Standing anyhow and all wrong, upon this open space^ 
like something meteoric that has fallen do^vn from the moon, 
is an odd, lop-sided, one-eyed kind of wooden building, that 
looks like a church, with a flag-§taff as long as itself sticking 
out of a steeple something larger than a tea-chest. Under the 
window, is a small stand of coaches, whose slave-drivers are 
sunning themselves on the steps of our door, and talking idly 
together. Tlie three most obtrusive houses near at hand, are 
the three meanest. On one — a shop, which never has any- 
thing in the window, and never has the door open — is painted 
in large characters, ''The City LuisrcH." At another, 
which looks like the back way to somewhere else, but is an 
independent building in itself, oysters are procurable in every 
style. At the third, which is a very, very little tailor's shop, 
pants are fixed to order ; or, in other words, pantaloons are 
made to measure. And that is our street in Washington. 

It is sometimes called the City of Magnificent Distances, 
but it might with greater propriety be termed the City of 
Magnificent Intentions ; for it is only on taking a bird's-eye 
view of it from the top of the Capitol, that one can at all 
comprehend the vast designs of its projector, an aspiring 
Frenchman. Spacious avenues, that begin in nothing, and 
lead nowhere ; streets, mile-long, that only want houses, 
roads, and inhabitants; public buildings that need but a 
public to be complete ; and ornaments of great thoroughfares, 
which only lack great thoroughfares to ornament — are its 
leading features. One might fancy the season over, and most 
of the houses gone out of town for ever with their masters. 
To the admirers of cities it is a Barmecide Feast ; a pleasant 
field for the imagination to rove in ; a monument raised to a 
deceased project, with not even a legible inscription to record 
its departed greatness. 



302 AJIERICAN NOTES 

Siicli as it is, it is likely to remain. It vras originally 
chosen for the seat of Government, as a means of averting the 
conflicting jealousies and interests of the different States ; and 
very probably, too, as being remote from mobs : a considera- 
tion not to be slighted, even in America. It has no trade or 
commerce of its own : having little or no population beyond 
the President and his establishment; the members of the 
legislature who reside there during the session ; the Govern- 
ment clerks and officers employed in the various departments ; 
the keepers of the hotels and boarding-houses; and the trades- 
men who supply their tables. It is very unhealthy. Few 
people would live in Washington, I take it, who were not 
obliged to reside there; and the tides of emigration and 
speculation, those rapid and regardless currents, are little 
likely to flow at any time towards such dull and sluggish 
water. 

The principal features of the Capitol, are, of course, the two 
Houses of Assembly. But there is, besides, in the centre of 
the building, a fine rotunda, ninety-six feet in diameter, and 
ninety-six high, whose cii'cular wall is divided into compart- 
m.ents, ornamented by historical pictures. Four of these 
have for their subjects prominent events in the revolutionary 
struggle. They were painted by Colonel Trumbull, himself a 
member of Washington's staff at the time of their occurrence; 
from which circumstance they derive a peculiar interest of 
their own. In this same hall JVIr. Greenough's large statue 
of Washington has been lately placed. It has great merits of 
course, but it struck me as being rather strained and violent 
for its subject. I could wish, however, to have seen it in a 
better light than it can ever be viewed in, where it stands. 

There is a very pleasant and commodious library in the 
Capitol; and from a balcony in fi*ont, the bird's-eye view, of 
which I have just spoken, may be had, together with a 
beautiful prospect of the adjacent country. In one of the 
ornamented portions of the building, there is a figure of 
Justice ; whereunto the Guide Book says, " the ai'tist at first 
contemplated giving more of nudity, but he was warned that 
the public sentiment in this country would not admit of it, 
and in his caution he has gone, perhaps, into the opposite 
extreme." Poor Justice ! she has been made to wear much 
stranger garments in America than those she pines in, in the 
Capitol. Let us hope tliat she lias changed her di*ess-maker 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 303 

since they were fashioned, and that the public sentiment of 
the country did not cut out the clothes she hides her lovely 
figure in, just now. 

The House of Representatives is a beautiful and spacious 
hall of semi-circular shape, supported by handsome pillars. 
One part of the gallery is appropriated to the ladies, and there 
they sit in front rows, and come in, and go out, as at a play or 
concert. The chair is canopied, and raised considerably above 
the floor of the House ; and every member has an easy chair 
and a writing desk to himself: which is denounced by some 
people out of doors as a most unfortunate and injudicious 
arrangement, tending to long sittings and prosaic speeches. 
It is an elegant chamber to look at, but a singularly bad one 
for all purposes of hearing. The Senate, which is smaller, is 
free from this objection, and is exceedingly well adapted to 
the uses for wliich it is designed. The sittings, I need hardly 
add, take place in the day ; and the parliamentary forms are 
modelled on those of the old country. 

I was sometimes asked, in my progress through other 
places, whether I had not been very much impressed by the 
heads of the lawmakers at Washington ; meaning not their 
chiefs and leaders, but literally their individual and personal 
heads, whereon their hair grew, and whereby the phreno- 
logical character of each legislator was expressed : and I 
almost as often struck my questioner dumb with indignant 
consternation by answering " No, that I didn't remember 
being at all overcome." As I must, at whatever hazard, 
repeat the avowal here, I will follow it up by relating my 
impressions on this subject in as few words as possible. 

In the first place — it may be from some imperfect develop- 
ment of my organ of veneration — I do not remember having 
ever fainted away, or having even been moved to tears of 
joyful pride, at sight of any legislative body. I have borne 
the House of Commons like a man, and have yielded to no 
weakness, but slumber, in the House of Lords. I have seen 
elections for borough and county, and have never been 
impelled (no matter which party won) to damage my hat by 
thro^dng it up into the air in triumph, or to crack my voice 
by shouting forth any reference to our Glorious Constitution, 
to the noble purity of our independent voters, or the unim- 
peachable integrity of our independent members. Having 
withstood such strong attacks upon my fortitude, it is possible 



804 AMERICAN NOTES 

tliat I may be of a cold and insensible temperament, amount- 
ing to icj^ness, in sucli matters ; and therefore my impressions 
of tlie live pillars of the Capitol at Washington must be 
received with such grains of allowance as this J^ee confession 
may seem to demand. 

Did I see in this public body an assemblage of men, bound 
together in the sacred names of Liberty and Freedom, and 
so asserting the chaste dignity of those twin goddesses, in all 
their discussions, as to exalt at once the Eternal Principles to 
which their names are given, and their own character, and 
the character of their countrymen, in the admiring eyes of the 
whole world ? 

It was but a week, since an aged, grey-haired man, a 
lasting honour to the land that gave him birth, who has done 
good service to his country, as his forefathers did, and who 
will be remembered scores upon scores of years after the 
worms bred in its corruption are but so many grains of 
dust — it was but a week, since this old man had stood for 
days upon his trial before this very body, charged with 
having dared to assert the infamy of that traffic, which has 
for its accursed merchandise men and women, and their 
unborn children. Yes. And publicly exhibited in the same 
city all the while ; gilded, framed and glazed ; hung up for 
general admiration ; shown to strangers not with shame, but 
pride ; its face not turned towards the wall, itself not taken 
down and burned ; is the Unanimous Declaration of The 
Thirteen United States of America, which solemnly declares 
that All Men are created Equal ; and are endowed by their 
Creator with the Inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the 
Pursuit of Happiness ! 

It was not a month since this same body had sat calmly 
by, and heard a man, one of themselves, vdth oaths which 
beggars in their drink reject, threaten to cut another's throat 
from ear to ear. There he sat, among them ; not crushed by 
the general feeling of the assembly, but as good a man 
as any. 

There was but a week to come, and another of that body, 
for doing his duty to those who sent him there ; for claiming 
in a Republic the Liberty and Freedom of expressing their 
sentiments, and making known their prayer ; would be tried, 
found guilty, and have strong censure passed upon him by 
the rest. His was a grave offence indeed ; for years before, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 305 

he had risen up and said, '^ A gang of male and female slaves 
for sale, warranted to breed like cattle, linked to each other 
by iron fetters, are passing now along the open street beneath 
the windows of yonr Temple of Equality ! Look ! " But 
there are many kinds of hunters engaged in the Pursuit of 
Happiness, and they go variously armed. It is the Inalien- 
able Right of some among them, to take the field after their 
Happiness, equipped with cat and cartwhip, stocks, and iron 
collar, and to shout their view halloa ! (always in praise of 
Liberty) to the music of clanking chains and bloody stripes. 

Where sat the many legislators of coarse threats ; of words 
and blows such as coalheavers deal upon each other, when 
they forget their breeding ? On every side. Every session 
had its anecdotes of that kind, and the actors were all there. 

Did I recognise in this assembly, a body of men, who 
applying themselves in a new world to correct some of the 
falsehoods and vices of the old, purified the avenues to Public 
Life, paved the dirty ways to Place and Power, debated and 
made laws for the Common Good, and had no party but their 
Country ? 

I saw in them, the wheels that move the meanest perversion 
of virtuous PoKtical Machinery that the worst tools ever 
wrought. Despicable trickery at elections ; under-handed 
tamperings with public ofiicers ; cowardly attacks upon 
opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired 
pens for daggers ; shameful trucklings to mercenary knaves, 
whose claim to be considered, is, that every day and week 
they sow new crops of ruin with their venal types, which are 
the dragon's teeth of yore, in everything but sharpness ; 
aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular 
mind, . and artful suppressions of all its good influences : 
such things as these, and in a word. Dishonest Faction in 
its most depraved and most unblushing form, stared out from 
avery corner of the crowded hall. 

Did I see among them, the intelligence and refinement: 
the true, honest, patriotic heart of America? Here and 
there, were drops of its blood and life, but they scarcely 
coloured the stream of desperate adventurers which sets that 
way for profit and for pay. It is the game of these men, and 
of their profligate organs, to make the strife of politics so 
fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in 
worthy men, that sensitive and delicate-minded persons shall 



306 AMERICAN NOTES 

be kept aloof, and ttey, and sucli as they, be left to battle out 
their selfish views unchecked. And thus this lowest of all 
scrambling fights goes on, and they who in other counti'ies 
would, fi-om their intelligence and station, most aspire to 
make the laws, do here recoil the farthest from that 
degradation. 

That there are, among the representatives of the people in 
both Houses, and among all parties, some men of high 
character and great abilities, I need not say. The foremost 
among those politicians who are known in Europe, have been 
already described, and I see no reason to depart from the rule 
I have laid down for my guidance, of abstaining from all 
mention of individuals. It will be sufficient to add, that to 
the most favourable accounts that have been written of them, 
I more than fully and most heartily subscribe; and that 
personal intercourse and free communication have bred within 
me, not the result predicted in the very doubtful proverb, but 
increased admiration and respect. They are striking men to 
look at, hard to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, 
Crichtons in varied accompKshment, Indians in fire of eye and 
gesture, Americans in strong and generous impulse ; and they 
as well represent the honour and wisdom of their coim.try at 
home, as the distinguished gentleman who is now its minister 
at the British Court sustains its highest character abroad. 

I visited both houses nearly every day, during my stay in 
Washington. On my initiatory visit to the House of Repre- 
sentatives, they divided against a decision of the chair; but 
the chair won. The second time I went, the member who was 
speaking, being interrupted by a laugh, mimicked it, as one 
child would in quarrelling with another, and added, ''that he 
would make honourable gentlemen opposite, sing out a little 
more on the other side of their mouths presently." But 
interruptions are rare; the speaker being usuallj'- heard in 
silence. There are more quarrels than with us, and more 
threatenings than gentlemen are accustomed to exchange in 
any civilised society of which we have record : but farm-yard 
imitations have not as yet been imported from the Parlia- 
ment of the United Kingdom. The feature in oratory which 
appears to be the most practised, and most relished, is the 
constant repetition of the same idea or shadow of an idea in 
fresh words ; and the inquiry out of doors is not, " "WTiAt did 
lie say ? " but, " How long did he speak ? " These, however, 



S-OR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 307 

are but enlargements of a principle which prevails else- 
where. 

The Senate is a dignified and decorous body, and its 
proceedings are conducted mth much, gravity and order. 
Both houses are handsomely carpeted ; but the state to which 
these carpets are reduced by the universal disregard of the 
spittoon with, which every honourable member is accommo- 
dated, and the extraordinary improvements on the pattern 
which are squirted and dabbled upon it in every dii-ection, do 
not admit of being described. I will merely observe, that I 
strongly recommend all strangers not to look at the floor ; 
and if they happen to drop anything, though it be their pui'se, 
not to pick it up with an ungloved hand on any account. 

It is somewhat remarkable too, at first, to say the least, to 
see so many honourable members with swelled faces ; and it 
is scarcely less remarkable to discover that this appearance is 
caused by the quantity of tobacco they contrive to stow within 
the hollow of the cheek. It is strange enough too, to see an 
honourable gentleman leaning back in his tilted chair with, 
his legs on the desk before him, shaping a convenient " plug " 
with his penknife, and when it is quite ready for use, shooting 
the old one from his mouth, as from a pop-gun, and clapping 
the new one in its place. 

I was surprised to observe that even steady old chewers of 
great experience, are not always good marksmen, which has 
rather inclined me to doubt that general proficiency with the 
rifle, of which we have heard so much in England. Several 
gentlemen called upon me who, in the course of conversation, 
frequently missed the spittoon at five paces ; and one (but he 
was certainly short-sighted) mistook the closed sash for the 
open window, at three. On another occasion, when I dined 
out, and was sitting with two ladies and some gentlemen round 
a fire before dinner, one of the company fell short of the fire- 
placOj six distinct times. I am disposed to think, however, 
that this was occasioned by his not aiming at that object ; as 
there was a white marble hearth before the fender, which was 
more convenient, and may have suited his purpose better. 

The Patent Office at "Washington, furnishes an extraor- 
dinary example of American enterprise and ingenuity ; for the 
immense number of models it contains, are the accumulated 
inventions of only five years : the whole of the previous col- 
lection having been destroyed bj fire. The elegant structure 



308 AMERICAN NOTES 

in which they are arranged, is one of design rather than 
execution, for there is but one side erected out of foui', though 
the works are stopped. The Post Office is a -very compact, 
and very beautiful building. In one of the departments, 
among a collection of rare and curious articles, are deposited 
the presents which have been made from time to time to the 
American ambassadors at foreign courts by the various poten- 
tates to whom they were the accredited agents of the Republic : 
gifts which by the law they are not permitted to retain. I 
confess that I looked upon this as a very painful exhibition, 
and one by no means flattering to the national standard of 
honesty and honour. That can scarcely be a high state of 
moral feeling which imagines a gentleman of repute and 
station, likely to be corrupted, in the discharge of his duty, by 
the present of a snuff-box, or a richly-mounted sword, or an 
Eastern shawl ; and surely the Nation who reposes confidence 
in her appointed servants, is likely to be better served, than 
she who makes them the subject of such very mean and paltry 
suspicions. 

At George Town, in the suburbs, there is a Jesuit College ; 
delightfully situated, and, so far as I had an opportunity of 
seeing, well managed. Many persons who are not members 
of the Romish Church, avail themselves, I believe, of these 
institutions, and of the advantageous opportunities they afford 
for the education of their children. The heights iu this 
neighbourhood, above the Potomac River, are very pic- 
turesque ; and are free, I should conceive, from some of the 
insalubrities of Washington. The air, at that elevation, was 
quite cool and refreshing, when in the city it was burning hot. 

The President's mansion is more like an English club-house, 
both within and without, than any other kind of establishment 
with which I can compare it. The ornamental ground about 
it has been laid out in garden walks ; they are pretty, and 
agreeable to the eye ; though they have that uncomfortable 
air of having been made yesterday, which is far from favour- 
able to the display of such beauties. 

My first visit to this house was on the morning after my 
arrival, when I was carried thither by an official gentleman, 
who was so kind as to charge himself with my presentation to 
the President. 

We entered a large hall, and having twice or thrice rung a 
bell which nobody answered, walked without fui'ther ceremony 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 309 

throiigli tlie rooms on the ground floor, as divers other gentle- 
men (mostly with their hats on, and their hands in their 
pockets) were doing very leisurely. Some of these had ladies 
with them, to whom they were showing the premises ; others 
were lounging on the chairs and sofas ; others, in a perfect 
state of exhaustion fi'om listlessness, were yawning drearily. 
The greater portion of this assemblage were rather asserting 
their supremacy than doing anything else, as they had no 
particular business there, that anybody knew off. A few were 
closely eyeing the moveables, as if to make quite sure that the 
President (who was far from popular) had not made away 
with any of the furniture, or sold the fixtures for his private 
benefit. 

After glancing at these loungers ; who were scattered over 
a pretty drawing-room, opening upon a terrace which com- 
manded a beautiful prospect of the river and the adjacent 
country ; and who were sauntering too, about a larger stevte- 
room called the Eastern Drawing-room; we went up-stairs 
into another chamber, where were certain visitors, waiting for 
audiences. At sight of my conductor, a black in plain clothes 
and yellow slippers who was gliding noiselessly about, and 
whispering messages in the ears of the more impatient, made 
a sign of recognition, and glided off to announce him. 

We had previously looked into another chamber fitted all 
roimd with a great bare wooden desk or counter, whereon 
lay files of newspapers, to which sundry gentlemen were re- 
ferrino;. But there were no such means of beo-uilino; the time 
in this apartment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as 
any waiting-room in one of our public establishments, ox any 
physician's dining-room during liis hours of consultation at 
home. 

There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. 
One, a tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the west ; sunburnt 
and swarthy ; with a brown- white hat on his knees, and a 
giant umbrella resting between his legs ; who sat bolt upright 
in his chair, frowning steadily at the carpet, and twitching 
the hard lines about his mouth, as if he had made up his 
mind ** to fix" the President on what he had to say, and 
wouldn't bate him a grain. Another, a Kentucky farmer, 
six-feet- six in height, with his hat on, and his hands under 
his coat-tails, who leaned against the wall and kicked the 
floor with his heel, as though he had Time's head under his 



310 AMERICAN NOTES 

shoe, and were literally *' killing" liim. A tliird, an oval- 
faced, bilious-looking man, with, sleek black liair cropped 
close, and wliiskers and beard shaved down to blue dots, who 
sucked the head of a thick stick, and from time to time took it 
out of his mouth, to see how it was getting on. A fourth did 
nothing but whistle. A fifth did nothing but spit. And 
indeed all these gentlemen were so very persevering and 
energetic in this latter particular, and bestowed their favours 
so abundantly upon the carpet, that I take it for granted the 
Presidential housemaids have high wages, or, to speak more 
genteelly, an amj^le amount of ''compensation:" which is 
the American word for salary, in the case of all public 
servants. 

We had not waited in this room many minutes, before the 
black messenger returned, and conducted us into another of 
smaller dimensions, where, at a business-like table covered 
with papers, sat the President himself. He looked somewhat 
worn and anxious, and well he might : being at war with 
everybody — but the expression of his face was mild and 
pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentle- 
manly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage 
and demeanour, he became his station singularly well. 

Being advised that the sensible etiquette of the republican 
court, admitted of a traveller, like myself, decHning, without 
any impropriety, an invitation to dinner, which did not reach 
me imtil I had concluded my arrangements for leaving Wash- 
ington some days before that to which it referred, I only 
retui'ned to this house once. It was on the occasion of one of 
those general assemblies which are held on certain nights, 
between the hours of nine and twelve o'clock, and are called, 
rather oddly, Levees. 

I went, with my wife, at about ten. There was a pretty 
dense crowd of carriages and people in the court-yard, and so 
far as I could make out, there were no very clear regulations 
for the taking up or setting down of company. There were 
certainly no policemen to soothe startled horses, either by 
sawing at their bridles or flourishing truncheons in their eyes ; 
and I am ready to make oath that no inofi'ensive persons were 
knocked violently on the head, or poked acutely in their backs 
or stomachs; or brought to a stand -still by any such gentle 
means, and then taken into custody for not moving on. But 
there was no confusion or disorder. Our carriage reached the 



FOE- GENERAL CIRCULATION. 311 

porcli in its turn, without any blustering, swearing, shouting, 
backing, or otlier disturbance : and we dismounted with, as 
much ease and comfort as though we had been escorted by 
the whole Metropolitan Force from A to Z inclusive. 

The suite of rooms on the grouncl-iloor, were lighted up ; 
and a military band was playing in the hall. In the smaller 
drawing-room, the centre of a circle of company, were the 
President and his daughter-in-law, who acted as the lady of 
the mansion : and a very interesting, graceful, and accom- 
plished lady too. One gentleman who stood among this 
group, appeared to take upon himself the functions of a 
master of the ceremonies. I saw no other officers or atten- 
dants, and none were needed. 

The gTeat drawing-roon, which I have already mentioned, 
and the other chambers on the ground-floor, were crowded to 
excess. The company was not, in our sense of the term, 
select, for it comprehended persons of very many grades, and 
classes ; nor was there any great display of costly attire : 
indeed some of the costumes may have been, for aught I 
know, grotesque enough. But the decorum and propriety of 
behaviour which prevailed, were unbroken by any rude or 
disagreeable incident ; and every man, even among the 
miscellaneous crowd in the hall who were admitted without 
any orders or tickets to look on, appeared to feel that he was 
a part of the Institution, and was responsible for its preserving 
a becoming character, and appearing to the best advantage. 

That these visitors, too, whatever their station, were not 
without some refinement of taste and appreciation of intel- 
lectual gifts, and gratitude to those men who, by the peaceful 
exercise of great abilities shed new charms and associations 
upon the homes of their countrymen, and elevate their 
character in other lands, was most earnestly testified by their . 
reception of Washington Irving, my dear friend, who had 
recently been appointed Minister at the court of Spain, and 
who was among them that night, in his new character, for the 
first and last time before going abroad. I sincerely believe 
that in all the madness of American politics, few public men 
would have been so earnestly, devotedly, and aff'ectionately 
caressed, as this most charming writer : and I have seldom 
respected a public assembly more, than I did this eager 
throng, when I saw them turning with one mind from noisy 
orators and officers of state, and flocking with a generous and 



812 AMERICAN NOTES 

honest impulse round tlie man of quiet pursuits : proud in his 
promotion as reflecting back upon their country : and grateful 
to him with their wliole hearts for the store of graceful 
fancies he had poured out among them. Long may he 
dispense such treasures with unsparing hand; and long may 
they remember him as worthily ! 



The term we had assigned for the duration of our stay in 
Washington, was now at an end, and we were to begin to 
travel; for the railroad distances we had traversed yet, in 
journeying among these older towns, are on that great conti- 
nent looked upon as nothing. 

I had at first intended going South — to Charleston. But 
when I came to consider the length of time which this journey 
would occupy, and the premature heat of the season, which 
even at Washington had been often very trying ; and weighed 
moreover, in my own mind, the pain of living in the constant 
contemplation of slavery, against the more than doubtful 
chances of my ever seeing it, in the time I had to spare, 
stripped of the disguises in which it would certainly be 
dressed, and so adding any item to the host of facts aheady 
heaped together on the subject ; I began to listen to old 
whisperings which had often been present to me at home in 
England, when I little thought of ever being here ; and to 
dream again of cities growing up, like palaces in fairy tales, 
among the wilds and forests of the west. 

The advice I received in most quarters when I began to 
jdeld to my desire of travelling towards that point of the 
compass was, according to custom, sufiiciently cheerless : my 
companion being threatened with more perils, dangers, and 
discomforts, than I can remember or M^ould catalogue if I 
could; but of which it will be sufficient to remark that 
blowings-up in steam-boats and breakings-down in coaches 
were among the least. But, having a western route sketched 
out for me by the best and kindest authority to which I could 
have resorted, and putting no great faith in these discourage- 
ments, I soon determined on my plan of action. 

This was to travel south, only to Richmond in Virginia ; 
and then to turn, and shape our course for the Far West ; 
whither I beseech the reader's company, in a new chapter. 



FOR GENERAL CIRGDLATION. ^^^ 



CHAPTER IX. 

A NIGHT STEAMER ON THE POTOMAC RIVER. VIRGINIA ROAD, AND A BLACK 
DRIVER. RICHMOND. BALTIMORE. THE HARRISBURG MAIL, AND A 
GLIMPSE OP THE CITT. A CANAL BOAT. 

We were to proceed in tlie first instance by steamboat : 
and as it is usual to sleep on board, in consequence of the 
starting-liour being four o'clock in the morning, we went 
doT\Ti to where she lay, at that very uncomfortable time for 
such expeditions when slippers are most valuable, and a 
familiar bed, in the perspective of an hour or two, looks 
uncommonly pleasant. 

It is ten o'clock at night * say half-past ten : moonlight, 
warm, and dull enough. The steamer (not unlike a child's 
Noah's ark in form, with the machinery on the top of the 
roof), is riding lazity up and down, and bumping clumsily 
against the wooden pier, as the ripple of the river triiies with 
its unwieldy carcase. The wharf is some distance from the 
city. There is nobody down here ; and one or two dull lamps 
upon the steamer's decks are the only signs of life remaining, 
when our coach has driven away. As soon as our footsteps 
are heard upon the planks, a fat negress, particularly favoured 
by nature in respect of bustle, emerges from some dark stairs, 
and marshals my wife towards the ladies' cabin, to which 
retreat she goes, followed by a mighty bale of cloaks and 
great-coats. I valiantly resolve not to go to bed at all, but to 
walk up and down' the pier till morning. 

I begin my promenade — thinking of all kinds of distant 
things and persons, and of nothing near — and pace up and 
down for half-an-hour. Then I go on board again ; and 
getting into the light of one of the lamps, look at my watch 
and think it must have stopped ; and wonder what has become 
of the faithful secretary whom I brought along with me from 
Boston. He is supping with our late landlord (a Field 
Marshal, at least, ao doubt) in honour of our departure, and 



314 



AMERICAN NOTES 



may be two hours longer. I walk again, but it gets duller 
and duller : tlie moon goes down : next June seems farther 
off in the dark, and the echoes of my footsteps make me 
nervous. It has turned cold too ; and walking up and down 
without any companion in such lonely circumstances, is but 
poor amusement. So I break my staunch resolution, and 
think it may be, perhaps, as well to go to bed. 

I go on board again ; open the door of the gentleman's 
cabin ; and walk in. Somehow or other — from its being so 
quiet, I suppose — I liave taken it into my head that there is 
nobody there. To my horror and amazement it is full of 
sleepers in every stage, shape, attitude, and variety of slumber : 
in the berths, on the chairs, on the floors, on the tables, and 
particularly round the stove, my detested enemy. I take 
another step forward, and slip upon the shining face of a 
black steward, who lies rolled in a blanket on the floor. He 
jumps up, grins, half in pain and half in hospitality ; whispers 
my own name in my ear ; and groping among the sleepers, 
leads me to my berth. Standing beside it, I count these 
slumbering passengers, and get past forty. There is no use 
in going further, so I begin to undress. As the chairs are all 
occupied, and there is nothing else to put my clothes on, I 
deposit them upon the ground : not without soiling my hands, 
for it is in the same condition as the carpets in the Capitol, 
and from the same cause. Having but partially undressed, I 
clamber on my shelf, and hold the curtain open for a few 
minutes while I look round on all my fellow travellers again. 
That done, I let it fall on them, and on the world : turn 
round : and go to sleep. 

I wake, of course, when we get under weigh, for there is a 
good deal of noise. The day is then just breaking. Every- 
body wakes at the same time. Some are self-possessed directly, 
and some are much perplexed to make out where they are 
until they have rubbed their eyes, and leaning on one elbow, 
looked about them. Some yawn, some groan, nearly all spit, 
and a few get up. I am among the risers : for it is easy to 
feel, without going into the fresh air, that the atmosphere of 
the cabin is vile in the last degree. I huddle on my clothes, 
go dowTi into the fore-cabin, get shaved by the barber, and 
wash myself. The washing and dressing apparatus for the 
passengers generally, consists of two jack-towels, three small 
"wooden basins, a keg of water and a ladle to serve it out 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 316 

"witli, six square inclies of looking-glass, two ditto ditto of 
yellow soap, a comb and briisli for the head, and nothing for 
the teeth. Everybody uses the comb and brush, except myself. 
Everybody stares to see me using my own ; and two or three 
gentlemen are strongly disposed to banter me on my prejudices, 
but don't When I have made my toilet, I go upon the 
hurricane-deck, and set in for two hours of hard walking up 
and down. The sun is rising brilliantly; we are passing 
Mount Vernon, where Washington lies buried; the river is 
wide and rapid ; and its banks are beautiful. All the glory 
and splendour of the day are coming on, and growing brighter 
every minute. 

At eight o'clock, we breakfast in the cabin where I passed 
the night, but the windows and doors are all thrown open^ 
and now it is fresh enough. There is no hurry or greediness 
apparent in the despatch of the meal. It is longer than a 
travelling breakfast with us ; more orderly ; and more polite. 

Soon after nine o'clock we come to Potomac Creek, where 
we are to land ; and then comes the oddest part of the journey. 
Seven stage-coaches are preparing to carry us on. Some of 
them are ready, some of them, are not ready. Some of the 
drivers are blacks, some whit(>s. There are four horses to 
each coach, and all the horses, harnessed or unharnessed, are 
there. The passengers are getting out of the steamboat, and 
into the coaches ; the luggage is being transferred in noisy 
wheelbarrows ; the horses are frightened, and impatient to 
start ; the black drivers are chattering to them like so many 
monkeys ; and the white ones whooping like so many drovers : 
for the maia thing to be 'done in all kinds of hostlering here, 
is to make as much noise as possible. The coaches are some- 
thing like the French coaches, but not nearly so good. In 
lieu of springs, they are hung on bands of the strongest 
leather. There is very little choice or difference between 
them ; and they may be likened to the car portion of the 
swings at an English fair, roofed, put upon axle-trees Tind 
wheels, and curtained with painted canvas. They are covered 
with mud from the roof to the wheel-tire, and have never 
been cleaned since they were first built. 

The tickets wo have received on board the steamboat are 
marked No. 1, so we belong to coach No. 1. I throw my 
coat on the box, and hoist my wife and her maid into the 
inside. It has only one step, and that being about a yard 



316 AlWERICAN NOTES 

from the ground, is usually approached by a chair : "vrhen 
there is no chair, ladies trust in Providence. The coach holds 
nine inside, having a seat across from door to door, where we in 
England put our legs : so that there is only one feat more 
difficult in the performance than getting in, and that is, 
getting out again. There is only one outside i3assenger, and 
he sits upon the box. As I am that one, I climb up ; and 
while they are strapping the luggage on the roof, and heaping 
it into a kind of tray behind, have a good opportunity of 
lookino;' at the driver. 

He is a negro — very black indeed. He is dressed in a 
coarse pepper-and-salt suit excessively patched and darned 
(particularly at the knees), grey stockings, enormous un- 
blacked high-low shoes, and very short trousers. He has two 
odd gloves : one of parti-coloured worsted, and one of leather. 
He has a very short whip, broken in the middle and bandaged 
up with string. And yet he wears a low-crowned, broad- 
brimmed, black hat : faintly shadowing forth a kind of insane 
imitation of an English coachman ! But somebody in autho- 
rity cries " Go ahead ! " as I am making these observations. 
The mail takes the lead in a four-horse waggon, and all the 
coaches follow in procession : headed by No. 1. 

By the way, whenever an Englishman would cry " All 
right ! " an American cries '' Go ahead ! " which is somewhat 
expressive of the national character of the two countries. 

The first half mile of the road is over bridges made of loose 
planks laid across two parallel poles, which tilt up as the 
wheels roll over them ; and in the river. The river has a 
clayey bottom and is full of holes, so that half a horse is 
constantly disappearing unexpectedly, and can't be found 
again for some time. 

But we get past even this, and come to the road itself, 
which is a series of alternate swamps and gi-avel-pits. A 
tremendous place is close before us, the black driver rolls his 
eyes, screws his mouth up very round, and looks straight 
b(itween the two leaders, as if he were saying to himself, " wo 
have done this often before, but now 1 think we shall have a 
crash." He takes a rein in each hand; jerks and pulls at 
both ; and dances on the splashboard with both feet (keeping 
his seat, of course) like the late lamented Ducrow on two of 
his fiery coursers. We come to tl\e spot, siuk down in the 
mire neaily to the coach windows, tilt on one side at an angle 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 317 

of forty-five degrees, and stick there. The insides scream 
dismally ; the coach stops ; the horses flounder ; all the other 
six coaches stop ; and their four-and-twenty horses flounder 
likewise : but merely for company, and in sympathy with 
ours. Then the foUowins: circumstances occui; 

Black Drivee, (to the horses). " Hi ! " 

Nothing happens. Insides scream again. 

Black Driver (to the horses). "Ho ! " 

Horses plunge, and splash the black driver. 

GE^'TLEMAX INSIDE (looking out) " ^y^J, what on 
airth— " 

Gentleman receives a variety of splashes and draws his 
head in again, without finishing his question or waiting for an 
answer. 

Black Driver (still to the horses). " Jiddy ! Jiddy ! " 

Horses pull violently, drag the coach out of the hole, and 
draw it up a bank ; so steep that the black driver's legs fly 
up into the air, and he goes back among the luggage on the 
roof. But he immediately recovers himself, and cries (still to 
the horses), 

No effect. On the contrary, the coach begins to roll back 
upon No. 2, which rolls back upon No, 3, which rolls back 
upon No. 4, and so on, until No. 7 is heard to curse and 
swear, nearly a quarter of a mile behind. 

Black Driver (louder than before). '' Pill ! " 

Horses make another struggle to get up the bank, and 
again the coach rolls backward. 

Black Driver (louder than before). ** Pe-e-e-ill ! " 

Horses make a desperate struggle. 

Black Driver (recovering spirits). " Hi, Jiddy, Jiddy, 
Pill ! " 

Horses make another effort. 

Black Driver (with great vigour). " Ally Loo ! Hi. 
Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. AHy Loo 1 " 

Horses almost do it. 

Black Driver (with his eyes starting out of his head). 
*' Lee, den, Lee, dere. Hi. Jiddy, Jiddy. Pill. Ally Loo. 
Lee-e-e-e-e ! " 

They run up the bank, and go down again on the other 
side at a fearful pace. It is impossible to stop them, and at 
the bottom there is a deep hollow, full of water. The coach 



318 AMERICAN NOTES 

rolls frightfully. Tlie insides scream. The mud and water fly 
about us. The black driver dances like a madman. Suddenly 
we a,re all right by some extraordinary means, an i stop to 
breathe. 

A black friend of the black driver is sitting on a fence. 
The black driver recognises him by twirling his head round 
and round like a harlequin, rolling his ej'es, shrugging his 
shoulders, and grinning from ear to ear. He stops short, 
turns to me, and says : 

*' We shall get you through sa, like a fiddle, and hope a 
please jo\i when we get you through sa. Old 'ooman at hume 
sir:" chuckling very much. ''Outside gentleman sa, he 
often remember old 'ooman at home, sa," grinning again. 

" Aje, aye, we '11 take care of the old woman. Don't be 
afi-aid." 

The black driver grins again, but there is another hole, 
and bej'oud that, another bank, close before us. So he stops 
short : cries (to the horses again) " Easy. Easy den. Ease. 
Steady. Hi. Jiddy. Pill. AUy. Loo," but never '' Lee ! " 
until we are reduced to the very last extremity, and are in the 
midst of difficulties, extrication from which appears to be all 
but impossible. 

And so we do the ten miles or thereabouts in two hours 
and a half; breaking no bones, though bruising a great 
many; and in short getting through the distance, "like a 
fiddle." 

This singular kind of coaching terminates at Fredericks- 
burgh, whence there is a railway to Richmond. The tract of 
country through which it takes its course was once productive : 
but the soil has been exhausted by the system of employing 
a great amount of slave labour in forcing crops, without 
strengthening the land : and it is now little better than a 
sandy desert overgrown with trees. Dreary and uninteresting 
as its aspect is, I was glad to the heart to find anything on 
which one of the curses of this horrible institution has fallen ; 
and had greater pleasure in contemplating the withered 
ground, than the richest and most thriving cultivation in the 
same place could possibly have afforded me. 

In tliis district, as in all others where slavery sits brood- 
ing, (I have frequently heard this admitted, even by those 
who are its Avarmest advocates:) there is an air of ruin and 
decay abroad, which is insepai-able fi'om the system. The 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 319 

bams and outliouses are mouldering away; the slieds are 
patclied and half roofless ; tlie log cabins (built in Virginia 
with, external chimneys made of clay or wood), are squalid in 
the last degree. There is no look of decent comfort anywhere. 
The miserable stations by the railway side ; the great wild 
woodyards, whence the engine is supplied with fuel; the 
negro children rolling on the ground before the cabin doors, 
with dogs and pigs ; the biped beasts of burden slinking 
past :_ gloom and dejection are upon them all. 

In the negro car belonging to the train in which we made 
this journey, were a mother and her children who had just 
been purchased ; the husband and father being left behind 
with their old owner. The children cried the whole way, and 
the mother was misery's picture. The champion of Life, 
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, who had bought them, 
rode in the same train ; and, every time we stopped, got down 
to see that they were safe. The black in Sinbad's Travels 
with one eye in the middle of his forehead which shone like a 
burning coal, was nature's aristocrat compared with this 
white gentleman. 

It was between six and seven o'clock in the evening, when 
we drove to the hotel : in front of which, and on the top of 
the broad flight of steps leading to the door, two or three 
citizens were balancing themselves on rocking-chairs, and 
smoking cigars. We found it a very large and elegant 
establishment, and were as well entertained as travellers need 
desire to be. The climate being a thirsty one, there was 
never, at any hour of the day, a scarcity of loungers in the 
spacious bfir, or a cessation of the mixing of cool liquors : but 
they were a merrier people here, and had musical instru- 
ments playing to them o' nights, which it was a treat to hear 
again 

The next day, and the next, we rode and walked about the 
tovm., which is delightfully situated on eight hills, overhanging 
James River ; a sparkling stream, studded here and there 
with bright islands, or brawling over broken rocks. Although 
it was yet but the middle of March, the weather in this 
southern temperature was extremely warm ; the peach-trees 
and magnolias were in full bloom ; and the trees were green. 
In a low ground among the hills, is a valley known as 
" Bloody Run," from a terrible conflict with the Indians which 
once occurred there. It is a good place for such a struggle. 



320 AMERICAN NOTES 

and, like every other spot I saw associated witli any legend 
of that Avild people now so rapidly fading from the earth, 
interested me very much. 

The city is the seat of the local parliament of Virginia ; 
and in its shady legislative halls, some orators were di-owsily 
holdii) g forth to the hot noon day. By dint of . constant 
repetition, however, these constitutional sights had very little 
more interest for me than so many parochial vestries ; and I 
was glad to exchange this one for a lounge in a well-arranged 
public library of some ten thousand volumes, and a visit to 
U tobacco manufactory, where the workmen were all slaves. 

I saw in this place the whole process of picking, rolling, 
pressing, drying, packing in casks, and branding. All the 
tobacco thus dealt with, was in course of manufacture for 
chewing ; and one would have supposed there was enough in 
that one storehouse to have filled even the comprehensive jaws 
of America. In this form, the weed looks like the oilcake on 
which we fatten cattle ; and even without reference to its con- 
sequences, is sufficiently uninviting. 

Many of the workmen appeared to be strong men, and 
it is hardly necessary to add that they were all labouring 
quietly, then. After two o'clock in the day, they are allowed 
to sing, a certain number at a time. The hour striking while 
I was there, some twenty sang a hymn in parts, and sang it 
by no means ill ; pursuing their work meanwhile. A bell 
rang as I was about to leave, and they all poured forth into 
a building on the opposite side of the street to dinner. I said 
several times that I should like to see them at their meal ; but 
as the gentleman to whom I mentioned this desire appeared 
to be suddenly taken rather deaf, I did not pursue the request. 
Of their appearance I shall have something to say, presently. 

On the following day, I visited a plantation or farm, of 
about twelve hundred acres, on the opposite bank of the river. 
Here again, although I went down with the owner of the 
estate, to '' the quarter," as that part of it in which the slaves 
live is called, I was not invited to enter into any of their 
huts. All I saw of them, was, that they were very crazy, 
wretched cabins, near to which groups of half-naked childi'en 
basked in the sim, or wallowed on the dusty ground. But I 
believe that this gentleman is a considerate and excellent 
master, who inherited his fifty slaves, and is neither a buyer 
nor a seller of human stock ; and I am sure, from my own 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 321 

observation and conviction, tliat lie is a kind-lieartec}^ worthy 
man. 

The planter's house was an airy rustic dwellfag", that 
brought Defoe's description of such places strongHy to my 
recollection. The day was very warm, but the blinds being 
all closed, and the windows and doors set wide open, a shady 
coolness rustled through the rooms, which was exquisitely 
refreshing after the glare and heat without. Before the 
windows was an open piazza, where, in what they call the 
hot weather — ^whatever that may be — they sling hammocks, 
and drink and doze luxuriously. I do not Iniow how their 
cool refections may taste within the hammocks, but, having 
experience, I can report that, out of them, the mounds of ices and 
the bowls of mint-julep and sherry-cobler they make in these 
latitudes, are refreshments never to be thought of afterwards, 
in summer, by those who would preserve contented minds. 

There are two bridges across the river : one belongs to the 
railroad, and the other, which is a very crazy affair, is the 
private property of some old lady in the neighbourhood, 
who le-vies tolls upon the town's people. Crossing this bridge, 
on my way back, I saw a notice painted on the gate, 
cautioning all persons to drive slowly : under a penalty, if 
the offender were a white man, of five dollars ; if a negro, 
fifteen stripes. 

The same decay and gloom that overhang the way by 
which it is approached, hover above the town of Richmond. 
There a,re pretty villas and cheerftd houses in its streets, 
and Nature smiles upon the country round ; but jostling its 
handsome residences, like slavery itself going hand in hand 
with many lofty virtues, are deplorable tenements, fences 
unrepaired, walls crumbling into ruinous heaps. Hinting 
gloomily at things below the surface, these, and many other 
tokens of the same description, force themselves upon the 
notice, and are remembered with depressing influence, when 
livelier features are forgotten. 

To those who are happily iinaccustomed to them, the 
countenances in the streets and labouring-places, too, are 
shocking. All men who know that there are laws against 
instructing slaves, of which the pains and penalties greatly 
exceed in their amount the fines imposed on those who maim 
and torture them, must be prepared to find their faces very 
low in the scale of intellectual expression. But the darknesa 

Y 



322 AMERICAN NOTES 

— not of skiu, but mind — which, meets the stranger's eye at 
every turn ; the brutalising and blotting out of all fairer 
characters traced by Nature's hand; immeasurably outdo his 
worst belief. That travelled creation of the great satirist's 
brain, who fresh from living among horses, peered from a high 
casement down upon his own kind with trembling horror, was 
scarcely more repelled and daunted by the sight, than those 
who look upon some of these faces for the fii'st time must 
surely be. 

I left the last of them behind me in the person of a 
wretched drudge, who, after running to and fro all day till 
midnight, and moping in his stealthy winks of sleep upon the 
stairs betweenwhiles, was washing the dark passages at four 
o'clock in the morning; and went upon my way with a 
grateful heart that I was not doomed to live where slavery 
was, and had never had my senses blunted to its wrongs and 
horrors in a slave-rocked cradle. 

It had been my intention to proceed by James River and 
Chesapeake Bay to Baltimore ; but one of the steam-boats 
being absent from her station through some accident, and the 
means of conveyance being consequently rendered uncertain, 
we returned to Washington by the way we had come (there 
were two constables on board the steam-boat, in pursuit of 
runaway slaves), and halting there again for one night, went 
on to Baltimore next afternoon. 

The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any 
experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is 
Barnum's, in that city : where the EDglish traveller will find 
curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in 
America (this is a disinterested remark, for I never use them) ; 
and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing 
himself, which is not at all a common case. 

This capital of the state of Maryland is a bustling busy 
town, with a great deal of traffic of various kinds, and in 
particular of water commerce. That portion of the town 
which it most favours is none of the cleanest, it is true ; but 
tlie upper part is of a ver}' different character, and has many 
agreeable streets and public buildings. The AVashington 
Monument, which is a handsome pillar with a statue on its 
summit ; the Medical College ; and the Battle ^Monument in 
memory of an engagement with the British at North Point ^ 
ai'O the most conspicuous among them. 



FOE GENERAL CIRCTJLATION. 323 

There is a very good prison in this city, and the state 
Penitentiary is also among its institutions. In this latter 
establishment there were two curious cases. 

One, was that of a young man, who had been tried for the 
murder of his father. The evidence was entirely circum- 
stantial, and was very conflicting and doubtful ; nor was it 
possible to assign any motive which could have tempted him 
to the commission of so tremendous a crime. He had been 
tried twice ; and on the second occasion th^ j^^T f'slt so much 
hesitation in convicting him, that they found a verdict of 
manslaughter, or murder in the second degree ; which it 
could not possibly be, as there had, beyond all doubt, been no 
quarrel or provocation, and if he were guilty at all, he was 
unquestionably guilty of murder in its broadest and worst 
signification. 

The remarkable feature in the case was, that if the 
unfortunate deceased were not really murdered by this own 
son of his, he must have been murdered by his own brother. 
The evidence lay in a most remarkable manner, between 
those two. On all the suspicious points, the dead man's 
brother was the witness ; all the explanations for the prisoner, 
(some of them extremely plausible) went, by construction and 
inference, to inculpate him as plotting to fix the guilt upon 
his nephew. It must have been one of them : and the jury 
had to decide between two sets of suspicions, almost equally 
unnatural, unaccountable, and strange. 

The other case, was that of a man who once went to a 
certain distiller's and stole a copper measure containing a 
quantity of liquor. He was pursued and taken with the 
property in his possession, and was sentenced to two years' 
imprisonment. On coming out of the jail, at the expiration 
of that term, he went back to the same distiller's and stole the 
same copper measure containing the same quantity of liquor. 
There was not the slightest reason to suppose that the man 
wished to return to prison : indeed everything, but the 
commission of the offence, made directly against that assump- 
tion. There are only two ways of accounting for this 
extraordinary proceeding. One is, that after underg )ing so 
much for this copper measure he conceived he had established 
a sort of claim and right to it. The other that, by dint of 
long thinkiug about, it had become a monomania with hi^i, 
and had acquired a fascination which he found it impossible 



v 



824 AMERICAN NOTES 

to resist : swelling from an Earthly Copper Gallon into an 
Ethereal Golden Yat. 

After remaining here a couple of days I bound myself to a 
rigid adlierence to the plan I had laid down so recently, and 
resolved to set forward on our western journey without any 
more delay. Accordingly, having reduced the luggage within 
the smallest possible compass (by sending back to New York, 
to be afterwards forwarded to us in Canada, so much of it as 
was not absolutely wanted) ; and having procured the 
necessary credentials to banking-houses on the way; and 
having moreover looked for two evenings at the setting sun, 
with as well-defined an idea of the country before us as if we 
had been going to travel into the very centre of that planet ; 
we left Baltimore by another railway at haK-past eight in the 
morning, and reached the town of York, some sixty miles off, 
hj the early dinner-time of the Hotel which was the starting- 
place of the four-horse coach, wherein we were to proceed to 
Harrisburg. 

This conveyance, the box of which I was fortunate enough 
to secure, had come down to meet us at the raih'oad station, 
and was as muddy and cumbersome as usual. As more 
passengers were waiting for us at the inn-door, the coachman 
observed under his breath, in the usual self-communicative 
voice, looking the while at his mouldy harness as if it were to 
that he was addressing liimself 

" I expect we shall want the big coach." 

I could not help wondering within myself what the size 
of this big coach might be, and how many persons it might 
be designed to hold ; for the vehicle which was too small for 
our purpose was something larger than two English heavy 
nig-ht coaches, and miorht have been the twin-brother of a 
French Diligence. My speculations were speedily set at rest, 
however, for as soon as we had dined, there came rumbling 
up the street, shaking its sides like a corpulent giant, a 
kind of barge on wheels. After much blundering and 
backing, it stopped at the door : rolling heavily from side 
to side when its other motion had ceased, as if it had 
taken cold in its damp stable, and between that, and the 
having been required in its dropsical old age to move at 
any faster pace than a walk, were distressed by shortness 
of wind. 

" If here ain't the Harrisburg mail at last, and dreadful 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 325 

briglit and smart to look at too," cried an elderly gentleman 
in some excitement, '' darn my mother ! " 

I don't know Avliat the sensation of being darned may be, 
or whether a man's mother has a keener relish or disrelish 
of the process than anybody else; but if the endurance of 
this mysterious ceremony by the old lady in question had 
depended on the accuracy of her son's vision in respect to the 
abstract brightness and smartness of the Harrisburg mail, 
she would certainly have undergone its infliction. However, 
they booked twelve people inside ; and the luggage (including 
such trifles as a large rocking-chair, and a good-sized dining- 
table) being at length made fast upon the roof, we started off 
in great 'state. 

At the door of another hotel, there was another passenger 
to be taken up. 

''Any room, sir?'* cries the new passenger to the 
coachman. 

** Well there 's room enough," replies the coachman, with- 
out getting down, or even looking at him. 

*' There ain't no room at all, sir," bawls a gentleman 
inside. Which another gentleman (also inside) confirms, by 
predicting that the attempt to introduce any more passengers 
*' won't fit nohow." 

The new passenger, without any expression of anxiety^ 
looks into the coach, and then looks up at the coachman : 
" Now, how do you mean to fi:x it ? " says he, after a pause : 
*'for I must go." 

The coachman employs himself in twisting the lash of his 
whip into a knot, and takes no more notice of the question : 
clearly signifying that it is anybody's business but his, and 
that the passengers would do well to fix it, among themselves. 
In this state of things, matters seem to be approximating to 
a fix of another kind, when another inside passenger in a 
corner, who is nearly sufibcated, cries faintly, 

*' I 'U get out.'^ 

This is no m.atter of relief or self-cono-ratidation to the 
driver, for his immoveable philosophy is perfectly undisturbed 
by anything that happens in the coach. Of all things in the 
world, the coach would seem to be the very last upon his 
mind. The exchange is made, however, and then the passen- 
ger who has given up his seat makes a third upon the box, 
seating himself in what he calls the middle : that is, witli 



826 AMERICAN NOTES 

half liis person on my legs, and tlie other half on the 

driver's. 

" Go a-liead cap'en," cries the colonel, who directs. 

'' Go-lang ! " cries the cap'en to his company, the horses, 
and away we go. 

We took up at a rural bar-room, after we had gone a few 
miles, an. intoxicated gentleman who climbed upon the roof 
among the luggage, and subsequently slipping off without 
hurting himself, was seen in the distant perspective reeling 
back to the grog-shop where we had found him. We also 
parted with more of our freight at different times, so that 
when we came to change horses, I was again alone outside. 

The coachmen always change with the horses, and are 
usually as dirty as the coach. The first was dressed like a 
very shabby English baker; the second like a Russian 
peasant : for he wore a loose purple camlet robe with a fur 
collar, tied round his waist with a parti-coloured worsted 
sash ; grey trousers ; light blue gloves ; and a cap of bear- 
skin. It had by this time come on to rain very heavily, and 
there was a cold damp mist besides, which penetrated to 
the skin. I was very glad to take advantage of a stoppage 
and get down to stretch my legs, shake the water off my 
great-coat, and swallow the usual anti- temperance recipe for 
keeping out the cold. 

When I mounted to my seat again, I observed a new 
parcel lying on the coach roof, which I took to be a rather 
large fiddle in a brown bag. In the course of a few miles, 
however, I discovered that it had a glazed cap at one end and 
a pair of muddy shoes at the other; and further observa- 
tion demonstrated it to be a small boy in a snuff-coloured 
coat, with his arms quite pinioned to his sides, by deep 
forcing into his pockets. He was, I presume, a relative 
or friend of the coachman's, as he lay a-top of the lug- 
gage with his face towards the rain; and except when e 
c]uinge of position brought his shoes in contact with my hat, 
ho appeared to be asleep. At last, on some occasion of our 
stopping, this thing slowl}' upreared itself to the height of 
three feet six, and fixing its eyes on me, observed in piping 
accents, with a complaisant yawn, half quenched in an 
obliging air of friendly patronage, ''Well now, stranger, I 
guess you find this a'most like an English arternoon, hey?" 

The scenery which had been tame enough at first, was, for 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 827 

the last ten or twelve miles, beautiful. Our road wound 
through the pleasant valley of the Susquehanna ; the river, 
dotted T\ith innumerable green islands, lay upon our right ; 
and on the left, a steep ascent, craggy with broken rock, and 
dark with pine-trees. The mist, wreathing itself into a hun- 
dred fantastic shapes, moved solemnly upon the water; and 
the gloom of evening gave to all an air of mystery and 
silence which greatly enhanced its natural interest. 

We crossed this river by a wooden bridge, roofed and 
covered in on all sides, and nearly a mile in length. It was 
profoundly dark j perplexed, with great beams, crossing and 
recrossing it at every possible angle ; and through the broad 
chinks and crevices in the floor, the rapid river gleamed, far 
down below, like a legion of eyes. We had no lamps ; and 
as the horses stumbled and floundered through this place, 
towai'ds the distant speck of d}dng light, it seemed intermi- 
nable. I really could not at first persuade myself as we 
rumbled heavily on, filling the bridge with holloAV noises, 
and I held down my head to save it from the rafters above^ 
but that I was in a painful dream ; for I have often dreamed 
of toiling through such places, and as often argued, even at 
the time, *' this cannot be reality." 

At length, however, we emerged upon the streets of 
Harrisburg, whose feeble lights, reflected dismally from the 
wet ground, did not shine out upon a very cheerful city. We 
were soon established in a snug hotel, which though smaller 
and far less splendid than many we put up at, is raised above 
them all in my remembrance, by having for its landlord the 
most obliging, considerate, and gentlemanly person I ever had 
to deal with. 

As we were not to proceed upon our journey until the 
afternoon, I walked out, after breakfast the next morning, to 
look about me ; and was duly shown a model prison on the 
solitary system, just erected, and as yet without an inmate ; 
the trunk of an old tree to which Harris, the fii'st settler 
here (afterwards buried under it) was tied by hostile Indians, 
with his funeral pile about him, when he was saved by 
the timely appearance of a friendly party on the opposite 
shore of the river; the local legislature (for there was 
another of those bodies here, again, in full debate) ; and the 
other curiosities of the town. 

I was very much interested in looking over a number of 



828 AMERICAN NOTES 

treaties made from tim^e to time with, the poor Indians, signed 
by the different chiefs at the period of their ratification, and 
preserved in the office of the Secretary to the Commonwealth. 
These signatures, traced of course by their own hands, are 
rough, drawings of the creatures or weapons they were called 
after. Thus, the Great Turtle makes a crooked pen-and-ink 
outline of a great turtle ; the Buffalo sketches a buffalo ; the 
War Hatchet sets a rough image of that weapon for his mark. 
So with the Arrow, the Fish, the Scalp, the Big Canoe, and 
all of them. 

I could not but think — as I looked at these feeble and 
tremulous productions of hands which could draw the longest 
arrow to the head in a stout ellv-horn bow, or split a bead or 
feather with a rifle-ball — of Crabbe's musings over the Parish 
Register, and the irregular scratches made with a pen, by men 
who would plough a lengthy furrow straight from end to end. 
Nor could I help bestowing many sorrowful thoughts upon 
the simple warriors whose hands and hearts were set there, in 
all truth and honesty ; and who only learned in course of time 
from white men how to break their faith, and quibble out of 
forms and bonds. I wondered, too, how many times the 
credulous Big Turtle, or trusting Little Hatchet, had put his 
mark to treaties which were falsely read to him ; and had 
signed away, he knew not what, until it went and cast him 
loose upon the new possessors of the land, a savage indeed. 

Our host announced, before our early dinner, that some 
members of the legislative body proposed to do us the honour 
of calling. He had kindly yielded up to us his wife's OAvn 
little parlour, and when I begged that he would show them 
in, I saw him look with painful apprehension at its pretty 
carpet ; though, being otherwise occupied at th.e time, the 
cause of his uneasiness did not occur to me. 

It certainly would have been more pleasant to all parties 
concerned, and would not, I think, have compromised their 
independence in any material degree, if some of these 
gentlemen had not only jaelded to the prejudice in favour of 
spittoons, but had abandoned themselves, for the moment, even 
to the conventional absurdity of pocket-handkerchiefs. 

It still continued to rain heavily, and when we went down 
to the Canal Boat (for that was the mode of conveyance by 
wliich we were to proceed) after dinner, the weatlier was as 
impromising and obstinately wet as one would desire to see. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 329 

Nor was tlie sig]it of tliis canal boat, in wMcli we were to 
spend three or four day^:, by any means a cbeerful one ; as it 
involved some uneasy speculations concerning the disposal of 
the passengers ai; night, and opened a wide field of inquiry 
touching the other domestic arrangements of the establish- 
ment, which was sufficently disconcerting. 

However, there it was — a barge with a little house in it, 
viewed from the outside ; and' a caravan at a fair, viewed from 
within : the gentlemen being accommodated, as the spectators 
usually are, in one of those locomotive museums of penny 
wonders ; and the ladies being partitioned off by a red curtain, 
after the manner of the dwarfs and giants in the same 
establishments, whose private lives are passed in rather close 
exclusiveness. 

We sat here, looking silently at the row of little tables, 
which extended down both sides of the cabin, and listening to 
the rain as it dripped and pattered on the boat, and plashed 
with a dismal merriment in the water, until the arrival of the 
railway train, for whose final contribution to our stock of 
passengers, our departure was alone deferred. It brought a 
great many boxes, which were bumped and tossed upon the 
roof, almost as painfully as if they had been deposited on one's 
own head, without the intervention of a porter's knot; and 
several damp gentlemen, whose clothes, on their drawing 
round the stove, began to steam again. No doubt it would 
have been a thought more comfortable if the driving rain, 
which now poured down more soakingly than ever, had 
admitted of a window being opened, or if our number had 
been something less than thirty ; but there was scarcely time 
to think as much, when a train of thi-ee horses was attached 
to the tow-rope, the boy upon the leader smacked his whip, 
the rudder creaked and groaned complainingiy, and we had 
begun our journey. 



830 AMEEICAN N0TE3 



CHAPTER X. 

SOME FURTHER ACCOUNT OF THE CANAL BOAT, ITS DOMESTIC ECONOMY, AND 
ITS PASSENGERS. JOURNEY TO PITTSBURG ACROSS THE ALLEGHANY 
MOUNTAINS. PITTSBURG. 

As it continued to rain most perseveringly, we all remained 
below : the damp gentlemen round the stove, gradually 
becoming mildewed by the action of the fire ; and the dry 
gentlemen lying at full length upon the seats, or slumbering 
uneasily with their faces on the tables, or walking up and 
down the cabin, which it was barely possible for a man of the 
middle height to do, without making bald places on his head 
by scraping it against the roof. At about six o'clock, all the 
small tables were put together to form one long table, and 
everybody sat do\^Ti to tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, 
shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings, 
and sausages. 

" Will you try," said my opposite neighbour, handing me a 
dish of potatoes, broken up in milk and butter, '' will you try 
some of these fixings ? " 

There are few words which perform such various duties as 
this word '' fix." It is the Caleb Quotem of the American 
vocabulary. You call upon a gentleman in a country town, 
and his help informs you that he is " fixing himself" just now, 
but will be down directly : by which you are to understand 
that he is dressing. You inquire, on board a steamboat, of a 
fellow passenger, whether breakfast will be ready soon, and 
he tells 3^ou he should think so, for when he was last 
below, they were *' fixing the tables:" in other words, 
laying the cloth. You beg a porter to collect your luggage, 
and he entreats you not to be uneasy, for he '11 '* fix it pre- 
sently : " and if you complain of indisposition, you are advised 
to have recourse to Doctor so and so, who will *' fix j^ou" 
in no time. 

One night, I ordered a bottle of mulled wine at an hotel 
where I was staying, and waited a long time for it j at length 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 331 

it was put upon the table with, an apology from the landlord 
that he feared it wasn't *' fixed properly." And I recollect 
once, at a stage-coach dinner, overhearing a very stern gentle- 
man demand of a waiter who presented him with a plate of 
underdone roast-beef, '* whether he called that, fixing God 
A'mighty's vittles?" 

There is no doubt that the meal, at which the invitation 
was tendered to me which has occasioned this digression, was 
disposed of somewhat ravenously; and that the gentlemen 
thrust the broad-bladed knives and the two-pronged forks 
further down their throats than I ever saw the same weapons 
go before, except in the hands of a skilful juggler : but no 
man sat down until the ladies were seated ; or omitted any 
little act of politeness which could contribute to their comfort. 
Nor did I ever once, on any occasion, anywhere, during my 
rambles in America, see a woman exposed to the slightest act 
of rudeness, incivility, or even inattention. 

By the time the meal was over, the rain, which seemed to 
have worn itself out by coming down so fast, was nearly over 
too ; and it became feasible to go on deck : which was a great 
relief, notwithstanding its being a very small deck, and being 
rendered still smaller by the luggage, which was heaped 
together in the middle under a tarpaulin covering ; leaving, 
on either side, a path so narrow, that it became a science to 
walk to and fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. 
It was somewhat embarrassing at first, too, to have to duck 
nimbly every five minutes whenever the man at the helm cried 
" Bridge ! " and sometimes, when the cry was *' Low Bridge," 
to lie down nearly flat. But custom familiarises one to any- 
thing, and there were so many bridges that it took a very short 
time to get used to this. 

As night came on, and we drew in sight of the first range 
of hills, which are the outposts of the Alleghany mountains, 
the scenery, which had been uninteresting hitherto, became 
more bold and striking. The wet ground reeked and smoked, 
after the heavy fall of rain ; and the croakins: of the frojjs 
(Avhose noise in these parts is almost incredible) sounded as 
though a million of fairy teams with bells, were travelling 
through the air, and keeping pace with us. The night was 
cloudy yet, but moonlight too : and when we crossed the Sus- 
quehanna river — over which there is an extraordinary wooden 
bridge with two galleries, one above the other, so that even 



332 - AMERICAN NOTES 

there, two boat-teams meeting, m.ay pass witliout confusion — ■ 
it was wild and grand. 

I have mentioned my having been in some uncertainty and 
doubt, at first,, relative to the sleeping arrangements on board 
this boat. I remained in the same vague state of mind until 
ten o'clock or thereabouts, when going below, I found 
suspended on either side of the cabin, three long tiers of 
hanging book -shelves, designed apparently for volumes of the 
small octavo size. Looking with greater attention at these 
contrivances (wondering to find such literary preparations in 
such a place), I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic 
sheet and blanket ; then I began dimly to comprehend that 
the passengers were the library, and that they were to be 
arranged, edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning. 

I was assisted to this conclusion by seeing some of them 
gathered round the master of the boat, at one of the tables, 
drawing lots with all the anxieties and passions of gamesters 
depicted in their countenances ; while others, with small pieces 
of cardboard in their hands, were groping among the shelves 
in search of numbers corresponding with those they had 
drawn. As soOn as any gentleman found his number, he took 
possession of it by immediately undressing himself and crawl- 
ing into bed. The rapidity with which an agitated gambler 
subsided into a snoring slumberer, was one of the most 
singular efi'ects I have ever witnessed. As to the ladies, they 
were abeady a-bed, behind the red curtain, which was care- 
fully drawn and pinned up the centre ; though as every cough, 
or sneeze, or whis^Der, behind this curtain, was perfectly audible 
before it, we had still a livel}^ consciousness of their society. 

The politeness of the person in authority had secured to me 
a shelf in a nook near this red curtain, in some degree 
removed from the great body of sleepers : to which place I re- 
tired, with many acknowledgments to him for his attention. 
I found it, on after-measurement, just the width of an ordinary 
sheet of Bath post letter-paper ; and I was at first in some un- 
certainty as to the best means of getting into it. But the 
shelf being a bottom one, I finally determined on lying upon 
the floor, rolling gently in, stopping immediately I touched 
the mattress, and remaining for the night with that side 
uppermost, whatever it might be. Luckily, I came upon my 
back at exactly the right moment. I was much alai'uied on 
looking upward, to see, by the shape of his half yard of sack- 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. ' 833 

ing (which his weight had bent into an exceedingly tight hag) 
that there was a very heavy gentleman above me, whom the 
slender cords seemed quite incapable of holding ; and I could 
Dot help reflecting upon the grief of my wife and family in the 
event of his coming down in the night. But as I could not 
have got up again without a severe bodily struggle, which 
might have alarmed the ladies ; and as I had nowhere to go 
to, even if I had; I shut my eyes upon the danger, and 
remained there. 

One of two remarkable circumstances is indisputably a fact, 
with reference to that class of society who travel in these 
boats. Either they carry their restlessness to such a pitch 
that they never sleep at all ; or they expectorate in dreams, 
which would be a remarkable mingling of the real and ideal. 
All night long, and every night, on this canal, there was a 
perfect storm and tempest of spitting ; and once my coat, being 
in the very centre of a hurricane sustained by five gentlemen 
(which moved vertically, strictly carrying out Reid's Theory of 
the Law of Storms,) I was fain the next morning to lay it on 
the deck, and rub it down with, fair water before it was in a 
condition to be worn again. 

Between five and six o'clock in the morning we got up, 
and some of us went on deck, to give them an opportunity of 
taking the shelves down ; while others, the morning being 
very cold, crowded round the rusty stove, cherishing the newly 
kindled fire, and filling the grate with those voluntary contri- 
butions of which they had been so liberal all night. The 
washing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin 
ladle chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who 
thought it necessary to cleanse himself (many were superior 
to this weakness), fished the dirty water out of the canal, and 
poured it into a tin basin, secui'ed in like manner. There was 
also a jack-towel. And, hanging up before a little looking- 
glass in the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread and 
cheese and biscuits, were a public comb and hair-brush. 

At eight o'clock, the shelves being taken down and put 
away, and the tables joined together, everybody sat down to 
the tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, pota- 
toes, picldes, ham, chops, black puddings, and sausages, all 
over again. Some were lond of compounding this variety, 
and having it all on their plates at once. As each gentleman 
got through his own personal amount of tea, coffee, bread, 



334 AMERICAN NOTES 

butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, picMes, ham, 
chops, black puddings, and sausages, lie rose up and AYalked 
off. When everybody had done with everything, the frag- 
ments were cleared away : and one of the waiters appearing 
anew in the character of a barber, shaved such of the company 
as desired to be shaved ; while the remainder looked on, or 
yawned over their newspapers. Dinner was breakfast again, 
without the tea and coffee; and supper and breakfast were 
identical. 

There was a man on board this boat, with a light fresh- 
coloured face, and a pepper-and-salt suit of clothes, who was 
the most inquisitive fellow that can possibly be imagined. He 
never spoke otherwise than interrogatively. He was an em- 
bodied inquiry. Sitting down or standing up, still or moving, 
walking the deck or taking his meals, there he was, with a 
great note of interrogation in each eye, two in his cocked ears, 
two more in his turned-up nose and chin, at least half a dozen 
more about the corners of his mouth, and the largest one of 
all in his hair, which was brushed pertly off his forehead in a 
flaxen clump. Every button in his clothes said, *' Eh ? "What 's 
that? Did you speak? Say that again, will you?" He 
was always wide awake, like the enchanted bride who drove 
her husband frantic ; always restless ; always thirsting for 
answers ; perpetually seeking and never finding. There never 
was such a curious man. 

I wore a fur great-coat at that time, and before we were 
well clear of the wharf, he questioned me concerning it, and 
its price, and where I bought it, and when, and what fur it was, 
and what it weighed, and what it cost. Then he took notice 
of my watch, and asked what that cost, and whether it Avas a 
French watch, and -where I got it, and how I got it, and whether 
I bought it or had it given me, and how it went, and where the 
keyhole was, and when I woimd it, every night or every morn- 
ing, and whether I ever forgot to wind it at all, and if I did, 
what then ? Where had I been to last, and where was I going 
next, and where was I going after that, and had I seen the 
President, and what did he say, and what did I say, and what 
did he say when I had said that ? Eh ? Lor now ! do tell ! 

Finding that nothing would satisfy him, I evaded his ques- 
tions after the first score or two, and in particular pleaded 
ignorance respecting the name of the fur whereof the coat was 
made. I am unable to say whether this was the reason, hut 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 335 

that coat fascinated Lim ever afterwards; he usually kept 
close behind me as I walked, and moved as I moved, that he 
might look at it the better; and he frequently dived into 
narrow places after me at the risk of his life, that he might 
have the satisfaction of passing his hand up the back, and 
rubbing it the wrong way. 

We had another odd specimen on board, of a different kind. 
This was a thin-faced, spare-figured man of middle age and 
stature, dressed in a dusty drabbish-coloured suit, such as I 
never saw before. He was perfectly quiet during the first 
part of the journey : indeed I don't remember having so much 
as seen him until he was brought out by circumstances, as 
great men oiten are. The conjunction of events which made 
him famous, happened, briefly, thus. 

The canal extends to the foot of the mountain, and there, of 
course, it stops; the passengers being conveyed across it by 
land carriage, and taken on afterwards by another canal boat, 
the counterpart of the first, which awaits them on the other 
side. There are two canal lines of passage-boats; one is 
called The Express, and one (a cheaper one) The Pioneer. The 
Pioneer gets first to the mountain, and waits for the Express 
people to come up ; both sets of passengers being convoyed 
across it at the same time. We were the Express company ; 
but when we had crossed the mountain, and had come to the 
second boat, the proprietors took it into their heads to draft 
all the Pioneers into it likewise, so that we were five-and-forty 
at least, and the accession of passengers was not at all of 
that kind which improved the prospect of sleeping at night. 
Our people grumbled at this, as people do in such cases ; but 
suffered the boat to be towed off with the whole freight aboard 
nevertheless ; and away we went down the canal. At home, 
I should have protested lustily, but being a foreigner here, I 
held my peace. Not so this passenger. He cleft a path 
among the people on deck (we were nearly all on deck), and 
without addressing anybody whomsoever, soliloquised as 
follows : 

'' This may suit you, this may, but it don't suit me. This 
may be all very well with Down Easters, and men of Boston 
raising, but it won't suit my figure no how ; and no two ways 
about that ; and so I tell you. Now ! I'm from the brown 
forests of the Mississippi, I am, and when the sun shines on 
me, it does shine- -a little. It don't glimmer where / live, 



336 AJtERICAN NOTES 

tlie sun don't. No. I 'm a Lrown forester, I am I an't a 
Johnny Cake. There are no smooth skins where I live. 
We 're rough men there. Rather. If Down Easters and 
men of Boston raising like this, I 'm glad of it, but I 'm 
none of that raising nor of that breed. No. This company 
wants a little fixing, it does. I 'm the wrong sort of man for 
'em, I am. They won't like me, they won't. This is piling 
of it up, a little too moiintamous, this is." At the end of 
every one of these short sentences he turned upon his heel, 
and walked the other way ; checking himself abruptly when 
he had finished another short sentence, and turning back 
again. 

It is impossible for me to say what terrific meaning was 
hidden in the words of this bro^m forester, but I know that 
the other passengers looked on in a sort of admiring horror, 
and that presently the boat was put back to the wharf, and as 
many of the Pioneers as could be coaxed or bullied into going 
away, were got rid of. 

When we started again, some of the boldest spirits on board 
made bold to say to the obvious occasion of this improvement 
in our prospects, " Much obliged to you, sir : " whereunto the 
brown forester (waving his hand, and still walking up and 
down as before), replied, " No you an't. You 're none o' my 
raising. You may act for yourselves, you may. I have 
pinted out the way. Down Easters and Johnny Cakes can 
follow if they please. I an't a Johnny Cake, / an't. I am 
from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am " — and so on, 
as before. He was unanimously voted one of the tables for 
his bed at night — there is a great contest for the tables — in 
consideration of his public services : and he had the warmest 
corner by the stove throughout the rest of the journey. But 
I never could find out that he did anything except sit there ; 
nor did I hear him speak again until, in the midst of the 
bustle and turmoil of getting the luggage ashore in the dark 
at Pittsburg, I stumbled over him as he sat smoking a cigar 
on the cabin steps, and heard him muttering to himself, with 
a short laugh of defiance, ** I an't a Johnny Cake, I an't. 
I 'm from the brown forests of the Mississippi, I am, damme ! " 
I am inclined to argue from this, that he had never left ofi 
Baying so ; but I could not make affidavit of that part of the 
Btory, if required to do so by my Queen and Country. 

As we have not reached Pittsburg yet, however, in the 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 837 

order of oiir narrative, I may go on to remark that breakfast 
was perliaps the least desirable meal of the day, as an addi- 
tion to the many savoury odours arising from the eatables 
already mentioned, there were whiffs of gin, whiskey, brandy, 
and rum, from the little bar hard by, and a decided seasoning 
of stale tobacco. Many of the gentlemen passengers were far 
from particular in respect of their linen, which was in some 
cases as yellow as the little rivulets that had trickled from the 
comers of their mouths in chewing, and dried there. Nor 
was the atmosphere quite free from zephyr whisperings of the 
thii'ty beds which had just been cleared away, and of which 
we were fuither and more pressingly reminded by the occa- 
sional appearance on the table-cloth of a kind of Game, not 
mentioned in the Bill of Fare. 

And yet despite these oddities — and even they had, for me 
at least, a humour of their own — there was much in this 
mode of travelling which I heartily enjo^^ed at the time, and 
look back upon with great pleasure. Even the running up, 
bare-necked, at five o'clock in the morning, from the tainted 
cabin to the dirt}^ deck ; scooping up the icy water, plunging 
one's head into it, and drawing it out, all fresh and glowing 
with the cold ; was a good thing. The fast, brisk walk upon 
the towing-path, between that time and breakfast, when every 
vein and artery seemed to tingle with health ; the exquisite 
beauty of the opening day, when light came gleaming off 
from everything ; the lazy motion of the boat, when one lay 
idly on the deck, looking through, rather than at, the deep blue 
sky ; the gliding on at night, so noiselessly, past frowning 
hills, sullen with dark trees, and sometimes angry in one red 
burning spot high up, where unseen men lay crouching round 
a fire ; the shining out of the bright stars, undisturbed by 
noise of wheels or steam, or any other sound than the liquid 
rippling of the water as the boat went on : all these were 
pure delights. 

Then, there were new settlements and detached log-cabina 
and frame-houses, full of interest for strangers from an old 
country : cabins with simple ovens, outside, made of clay ; 
and lodgings for the pigs nearly as good as many of the 
human quarters ; broken windows, patched with worn-out 
hats, old clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper ; 
and home-made dressers standing in the open air without the 
door, whereon was ranged the household store, not hard to 



,838 AMERICAN NOTES 

count, of eartlien jars and pots. The eye was pained to 
see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field 
of wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swamp and dull 
morass, with hundreds of rotten trunks and twisted branches 
steeped in its unwholesome water. It was quite sad and 
oppressive, to come upon great tracts where settlers had been 
burning down the trees, and where their wounded bodies lay 
about, like those of murdered creatures, while here and there 
some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two withered 
arms, and seemed to call down curses on his foes. Sometimes, 
at night, the way wound through some lonely gorge, like a 
mountain pass in Scotland, shining and coldlj^ glittering in 
the light of the moon, and so closed in by high steep hills all 
round, that there seemed to be no egress save through the 
narrower path by which we had come, until one rugged hill- 
side seemed to open, and, shutting out tvhe moonlight as we 
passed into its gloomy throat, wrapped our new course in 
shade and darkness. 

We had left Ilarrisburg on Friday. On Sunday morning 
we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by 
railroad. There are ten inclined planes ; five ascending, and 
five descending ; the carriages are dragged up the former, and 
let slowly down the latter, by means of stationary engines ; 
the comparatively level spaces between being traversed, some- 
times by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case 
demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme 
verge of a giddy precipice ; and lookiog from the carriage 
window, the traveller gazes sheer down, without a stone or 
scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below. The 
journey is very carefully made, however ; only two carriages 
travelling together ; and, while proper precautions are taken, 
is not to be dreaded for its dangers. 

It was very pretty travelling thus, at a rapid pace along 
the heights of the mountain in a keen wind, to look down 
into a valley full of light and softness : catching glimpses, 
through the tree-tops, of scattered cabins ; children running 
to the doors ; dogs bursting out to bark, whom we coidd see 
without hearing ; terrified pigs scampering homewards ; 
families sitting out in their rude gardens ; cows gazing up- 
ward with a stupid indifference ; men in their shirt-sleevea 
looking on at their unfinished houses, planning out to- 
morrow's work ; and we riding onward, high above them, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 330 

like a wliirl^^nd. It was arausing, too, wlieii we had dined, 
and rattled down a steep pass, having no other moving power 
than the weight of the carriages themselves, to see the engine 
released, long after ns, come buzzing doT\Ti alone, like a great 
insect, its back of green and gold so shining in the sun, that 
if it had spread a pair of wings and soared away, no one would 
have had occasion, as I fancied, for the least surprise. But 
it stopped short of us in a very business-like manner when 
we reached the canal ; and before we left the wharf, went 
panting up this hill again, with the passengers who had 
waited our arrival for the means of traversing the road by 
which we had come. 

On the Monday evening, furnace fires and clanking hammers 
on the banks of the canal, warned us that we approached the 
termination of this part of our journey. After going through 
another dreamy place — a long aqueduct across the Alleghany 
River, which was stranger than the bridge at Harrisburg, being 
a vast low wooden chamber full of water — we emerged upon 
that ugly confusion of backs of buildings and crazy galleries 
and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, 
sea, canal, or ditch : and were at Pittsburg. 

Pittsburg is like Birmingham in England ; at least its 
townspeople say so. Setting aside the streets, the shops, the 
houses, wagons, factories, public buildings, and population, 
perhaps it may be. It certainly has a great quantity of smoko 
hano'ino- about it, and is famous for its iron- works. Besides 
the prison to which I have already referred, this town contains 
a prett}^ arsenal and other institutions. It is very beautifully 
situated on the Alleghany River, over which there are two 
bridges ; and the villas of the wealthier citizens sprinkled 
about the high grounds in the neighbourhood, are pretty 
enough. We lodged at a most excellent hotel, and weria 
admirably served. As usual it was full of boarders, was very 
large, and had a broad colonnade to every story of the house. 

We tarried here, three days. Our next point was Cincin- 
nati : and as this was a steam-boat journey, and western 
steamboats usually blow up one or two a week in the season, 
it was advisable to collect opinions in reference to the com- 
parative safety of the vessels bound that way, then lying in 
the river. One called The Messenger was the best recom- 
mended. She had been advertised to start positivelj', every 
day for a fortnight or so, and had not gone yet, nor did her 



840 AMERICAN NOTES 

captain seem to have any very fixed intention on t!ie subject. 
But this is the cnstom : for if the law were to bind down a 
free and independent citizen to keep his word with the public, 
"what would become of the liberty of the subject ? Besides, 
it is in the way of trade. And if passengers be decoyed in 
the way of trade, and people be inconvenienced in the waj of 
trade, what man, who is a sharp tradesman himself, shall say 
*' We must put a stop to this ?" 

Impressed by the deep solemnity of the public announce- 
ment, I (being then ignorant of these usages) was for hurrying 
on board in a breathless state, immediately; but receiving 
private and confidential information that the boat would 
certainly not start until Friday, April the First, we made our- 
selves very comfortable in the mean while, and went on board 
at noon that day. 



FOB GENERAL CIRCULATION. 341 



CHAPTER XL 

TKOM PITTSBURG TO CINCINNATI IN A WESTERN STEAM-BOAT. CINCINNATI. 

The Messenger was one among a crowd of high. -pressure 
steamboats, clustered together by the wharf-side, which, 
looked down upon from the rising ground that forms the 
landing-place, and backed by the lofty bank on the opposite 
side of the river, appeared no larger than so many floating 
models. She had some forty passengers on board, exclusive 
of the poorer persons on the lower deck ; and in half an hour, 
or less, proceeded on her way. 

We had, for ourselves, a tiny state-room with two berths in 
it, opening out of the ladies' cabin. There was, undoubtedly, 
something satisfactory in this *^ location," inasmuch as it was 
in the stern, and we had been a great many times very gravely 
recommended to keep as far aft as possible, ''because the 
steamboats generally blew up forward," Nor was this an 
unnecessary caution, as the occurrence and circumstances of 
more than one such fatality during our stay sufficiently testified. 
Apart from this source of self- congratulation, it was an 
unspeakable relief to have any place, no matter how confined, 
where one could be alone : and as the row of little chambers 
of which this was one, had each a second glass-door besides 
that in the ladies' cabin, which opened on a narrow gallery 
outside the vessel, where the other passengers seldom came, 
and where one could sit in peace and gaze upon the sliifting 
prospect, we took possession of our new quarters with much 
pleasure. 

If the native packets I have already described be unlike 
anvthino: we are in tlie habit of seeinc: on w^ater, these western 
vessels are still more foreign to all the ideas we are accustomed 
to entertain of boats. I hardly know what to liken them to, 
or how to describe them. 

In the first place, they have no mast, cordage, tackle, 
rigging, or other such boat-like gear ; nor have they anything 



3i2 AMERICAN NOTES 

in their sliape at all calculated to remind one of a boat's head, 
stern, sides, or keel. Except that they are in the water, and 
display a couple of paddle-boxes, they might be intended, for 
anything that appears to the contrary, to perform some 
unknown service, high and dry, upon a mountain top. There 
is no visible deck, even : nothing but a long, black, ugly roof, 
covered with burnt-out feathery sparks ; above which tower 
two iron chimneys, and a hoarse escape valve, and a glas3 
steerage-house. Then, in order as the eye descends towards 
the water, are the sides, and doors, and windows of the state- 
rooms, jumbled as oddly together as though they formed a 
small street, built by the varying tastes of a dozen men : the 
whole is supported on beams and pillars resting on a dirty 
barge, but a few inches above the water's edge : and in the 
narrow space between this upper structure and this barge's 
deck, are the furnace fires and machinery, open at the sides to 
every wind that blows, and every storm of rain it drives along 
its path. 

Passing one of these boats at night, and seeing the great 
body of fire, exposed as I have just described, that rages and 
roars beneath the frail pile of painted wood : the machinery, 
not warded off or guarded in any way, but doing its work in 
the midst of the crowd of idlers and emigrants and children, 
who throng the lower deck : under the management, too, of 
reckless men whose acquaintance with its mysteries may have 
been of six months' standing : one feels directly that the 
wonder is, not that there should be so many fatal accidents, 
but that any journey should be safely made. 

Within, there is one long narrow cabin, the whole length of 
the boat ; from which the state-rooms open, on both sides. A 
small portion of it at the stern is partitioned off for the ladies; 
and the bar is at the opposite extreme. There is a long table 
down the centre, and at either end a stove. The wasliing 
apparatus is forward, on the deck. It is a little better than 
on board the canal boat, but not much. In all modes of 
travelling, the American customs, with reference to the means 
of personal cleanliness and wholesome ablution, are extremely 
negligent and filthy ; and I strongly incline to the belief that 
a considerable amount of illness is referable to this cause. 

We are to be on board The Messenger three days : arriving 
at Cincinnati (barring accidents) on Monday morning. There 
are three meals a day. Breakfast at seven, dinner at half- 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 343 

past twelve, supper about six. At each, there aro a great 
many small dishes and plates upon the table, with very little 
in them ; so that although there is every appearance of a 
mighty ''spread," there is seldom really more than a joint: 
except for those who fancy slices of beet-root, shreds of dried 
beef, complicated entanglements of yellow pickle ; maize, Indian 
corn, apple-sauce, and pumpkin. 

Some people fancy all these little dainties together (and 
sweet preserves beside), by way of relish to their roast pig. 
They are generally those dyspeptic ladies and gentlemen who 
eat unheard-of quantities of hot corn bread (almost as good 
for the digestion as a kneaded pin-cushion) for breakfast and 
for supper. Those who do not observe this custom, and who 
help themselves several times instead, usually suck their knives 
and forks meditativel}^, until they have decided what to take 
next : then pull them out of tlieir mouths : put them in the 
dish ; help themselves ; and fall to work again. At dinner, 
there is nothing to drink upon the table, but great jugs full 
of cold water. Nobody says anything, at any meal, to any- 
body. All the passengers are very dismal, and seem to have 
tremendous secrets weighing on their minds. There is no 
conversation, no laughter, no cheerfulness, no sociahty, except 
in spitting ; and that is done in silent fellowship round the 
stove, when the meal is over. Every man sits down, dull and 
languid ; swallows his fare as if breakfasts, dinners, and sup- 
pers, were necessities of nature never to be coupled with 
recreation or enjoyment ; and having bolted his food in a 
gloomy silence bolts himself, -in the same state. But for these 
animal observances, you might suppose the whole male portion 
of the company to be the melancholy ghosts of departed book- 
keepers, who had fallen dead at the desk : such is their weary 
air of business and calculation. Undertakers on duty would 
be sprightly beside them ; and a collation of fimeral-baked 
meats, in comparison with these meals, would be a sparkling 
festivity. 

The people are all alike, too. There is no diversity of 
character. They travel about on the same errands, say and 
do the same things in exactly the same manner, and follow 
in the same dull cheerless round. All down the long table, 
there is scarcely a man who is in anything different from hia 
neighbour. It is quite a relief to have, sitting opposite, that 
little girl of fifteen with the loquacious chin : who, to do her 



344 AMERICAN NOTES 

justice, acts up to it, and fully identifies nature's handwriting, 
for of all the small chatterboxes that ever invaded the repose 
of drowsy ladies' cabin, she is the first and foremost. The 
beautiful girl, who sits a little beyond her — farther doAvn 
the table there — married the young man with the dark whis- 
kers, who sits beyond her, only last month. They are going 
to settle in the very Far West, where he has lived four years, 
but where she has never been. They were both overturned 
in a stage-coach the other day (a bad omen anywhere else, 
where overturns are not so common), and his head, which 
bears the marks of a recent wound, is bound up still. She 
was hurt too, at the same time, and lay insensible for some 
days ; bright as her eyes are, now. 

Further down still, sits a man who is going some miles 
beyond their place of destination, to '^improve" a newly 
discovered copper mine. He carries the village — that is to 
be — with him : a few frame cottages, and an apparatus for 
smelting the copper. He carries its people too. They are partly 
American and partly Irish, and herd together on the lower 
deck ; where they amused themselves last evening till tlie 
night was pretty far advanced, by alternately firing off pistols 
and singing hymns. 

They, and the very few who have been left at table twenty 
minutes, rise, and go away. We do so too ; and passing 
through our little state-room, resume our seats in the quiet 
gallery without. 

A fine broad river always, but in some parts much wider 
than in others : and then there is usually a green island, 
covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occasionally, 
we stop for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for 
passengers, at some small town or village (I ought to say cit}*, 
every place is a city here) ; but tlie banks are for the most 
part deep solitudes, overgro-wn with trees, which, hereabouts, 
are already in leaf and very green. For miles, and miles, 
and miles, tliese solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human 
life or trace of human footstep ; nor is anything seen to move 
about them but the blue jay, whose colour is so briglit, 
and yet so delicate, that it looks like a flying flower. At 
lengthened intervals a log-cabin, with its little space of cleared 
land about it, nestles under a rising ground, and sends its 
thread of blue smoke curling up into the sky. It stands in 
the corner of the poor field of wheat, wliich is full of great 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 345 

unsiglitly stumps, like earthy butcliers' -blocks. Sometimes 
the ground is only just now cleared : the felled trees lying yet 
upon the soil : and the log-house only this morning begun. 
As we pass this clearing, the settler leans upon his axe or 
hammer, and looks wistfully at the people from the world. 
The children creep out of the temporary hut, which is like a 
gipsy tent upon the ground, and clap their hands and shout. 
The dog only glances round at us; and then looks up into his 
master's face again, as if he were rendered uneasy by any 
Bus^Dension of the common business, and had nothing more to 
do with pleasiu-ers. And still there is the same, eternal fore- 
ground. The river has washed away its banks, and stately 
trees have fallen down into the stream. Some have been there 
so long, that they are mere dry grizzly skeletons. Some have 
just toppled over, and having earth yet about their roots, are 
bathing their green heads in the river, and putting forth new 
shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding down, as you 
look at them. And some were drowned so long ago, that 
their bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, 
and seem to try to grasp the boat, and drag it under water. 

Through such a scene as this, the unwieldy machine takes 
its hoarse sullen way : venting, at every revolution of the 
paddles, a loud high-pressure blast ; enough, one Wuuld 
think, to waken up the host of Indians who lie buried in a 
great mound yonder : so old, that mighty oaks and other 
forest trees have struck their roots into its earth ; and so high, 
that it is a hill, even among the hills that Nature planted 
round it. The very river, as though it shared one's feelings 
of compassion for the extinct tribes who lived so pleasantly 
here, in their blessed ignorance of white existence, hundreds 
of years ago, steals out of its way to ripple near this mound : 
and there are few places where the Ohio sparkles moro 
brightly than in the Big Grave Creek. 

All this I see as I sit in the little stern-gallery mentioned 
just now. Evening slowly steals upon the landscape, and 
changes it before me, when we stop to set some emigrants 
ashore. 

Five men, as many women, and a little girl. All their 
worldly goods are a bag, a large chest and an old chair : 
one, old, high-backed, rush-bottomed chair : a solitary settler 
in itself. They are rowed ashore in the boat, while the vessel 
stands a little off awaiting its return, the water being shallow. 



346 AMERICAN NOTES 

They are landed at the foot of a high bank, on the summit of 
which are a few log cabins, attainable only by a long winding 
path. It is growing dusk ; but the sun is very red, and shines 
in the water and on some of the tree-tops, like fire. 

The men get out of the boat first ; help out the women ; 
take out the bag, the chest, the chair ; bid the rowers " good 
bye ; " and shove the boat off for them. At the first plash of 
the oars in the water, the oldest woman of the party sits down 
in the old chair, close to the water's edge, without speaking a 
word. None of the others sit down, though the chest is large 
enough for many seats. They all stand where they landed, 
as if stricken into stone ; and look after the boat. So they 
remain, quite still and silent : the old woman and her old chair 
in the centre ; the bag and chest upon the shore, without any- 
body heeding them: all eyes fixed upon the boat. It comes 
alongside, is made fast, the men jump on board, the engine is 
put in motion, and we go hoarsely on again. There they stand 
yet, without the motion of a hand. I can see them, through 
my glass, when, in the distance and increasing darkness, they 
are mere specks to the eye : lingering there still : the old 
woman in the old chair, and all the rest about her ; not 
stirring in the least degree. And thus I slowly lose them. 

The night is dark, and we proceed within the shadow of 
the wooded bank, which makes it darker. After gliding 
past the sombre maze of boughs for a long time, we come 
upon an open space where the tall trees are burning. The 
shape of every branch and twig is expressed in a deep red 
glow, and as the light wind stirs and ruffles it, they seem to 
vegetate in fire. It is such a sight as we read of in legends 
of enchanted forests : saving that it is sad to see these 
noble works wasting away so awfully, alone ; and to think 
how many years must come and go before the magic that 
created them will rear their like upon this ground again. 
But the time will come: and when, in their changed ashes, 
the growth of centuries unborn has struck its roots, the 
restless men of distant ages will repair to these again un- 
peopled solitudes ; and their fellows, in cities far away, that 
slumber now, perhaps, beneath the rolling sea, will read, in 
language strange to any ears in being now but very old to 
them, of primeval forests where the axe was never heard, 
and where the jungled ground was never trodden by a human 
foot. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATIOIT. 847 

Midniglit and sleep blot out these scenes and tlioiights ; 
and when the morning shines again, it gilds the house-tops 
of a lively city, before whose broad paved wharf the boat is 
moored : mth other boats, and flags, and moving wheels, 
and hum of men around it ; as though there were not a 
solitary or silent rood of ground within the compass of a 
thousand miles. 

Cincinnati is a beautiful city ; cheerful, thriving, and 
animated, I have not often seen a place that commends 
itself so favourably and pleasantly to a stranger at the first 
glance as this does : with its clean houses of red and white, 
its well-paved roads, and foot-ways of bright tile. Nor does 
it become less prepossessing on a closer acquaintance. The 
streets are broad and airy, the shops extreme^ good, the private 
residences remarkable for their elegance and neatness. There 
is something of invention and fancy in the varying styles of 
these latter erections, which, after the dull company of the 
steamboat, is perfectly delightful, as conveying an assurance 
that there are such qualities still in existence. The disposition 
to ornament these pretty villas and render them attractive, 
leads to the culture of trees and flowers, and the laying out 
of well-kept gardens, the sight of which, to those who walk 
along the streets, is inexpressibly refreshing and agreeable. 
I was quite charmed with the appearance of the to"«Ti, and its 
adjoining suburb of Mount Auburn ; from which the city, 
lying in an amphitheatre of hills, forms a picture of remark- 
able beauty, and is seen to great advantage. 

There happened to be a great Temperance Convention held 
here on the day after our arrival ; and as the order of march 
brought the procession under the windows of the hotel in 
which we lodged, when they started in the morning, I had a 
good opportunity of seeing it. It comprised several thousand 
men ; the members of various ''Washington Auxiliary Tem- 
perance Societies; " and was marshalled by ofiicers on horse- 
back, who cantered briskly up and down the line, with scarvea 
and ribbons of bright colours fluttering out behind them gaily. 
There were bands of music too, and banners out of number : 
and it was a fresh, holiday-looking concourse altogether. 

I was particularly pleased to see the Irishmen, who formed 
a distinct society among themselves, and mustered very strong 
with their green scarves ; carrying their national Harp and 
their Portrait of Father Mathew, high above the people's 



348 AMERICAN NOTES 

heads. They looked as jolly and good-humoiired as ever ; 
and, working (liere) the hardest for their living and doing 
any kind of sturdy labour that came in their way, were the 
most independent fellows there, I thought. 

The banners were very well painted, and flaunted down the 
street famously. There was the smiting of the rock, and the 
gushing forth of the waters ; and there was a temperate man 
with "considerable of a hatchet" (as the standard-bearer 
would probably have said), aiming a deadly blow at a serpent 
which was apparently about to spring upon him from the 
top of a barrel of spirits. But the chief feature of this 
part of the show was a huge allegorical device, borne among 
the ship-carpenters, on one side whereof the steamboat 
Alcohol was represented bursting her boiler and exploding 
with a great crash, while upon the other, the good ship 
Temperance sailed away with a fair wind, to the heart's 
content of the captain, crew, and passengers. 

After going round the town, the procession repaired to a 
certain appointed place, where as the printed programme set 
forth, it would be received by the children of the different 
free schools, ''singing Temperance Songs." I was prevented 
from getting there in time to hear these Little Warblers, or 
to report upon this novel kind of vocal entertainment : novel, 
at least, to me : but I found, in a large o]Den space, each 
society gathered round its own banners, and listening in silent 
attention to its own orator. The speeches, judging from the 
little I could hear of them, were certainly adapted to the 
occasion, as having that degree of relationship to cold water 
which wet blankets may claim : but the main thing was the 
conduct and appearance of the audience throughout the day ; 
and that was admirable and full of promise. 

Cincinnati is honourably famous for its free-schools, of 
which it has so many that no person's child among its 
population can, by possibility, want the means of education, 
which are extended, upon an average, to four thousand pupils, 
annually. I was only present in one of these establishments 
during the hours of instruction. In the boy's department, 
which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I 
should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master 
offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils 
in algebra ; a proposal, which, as I was by no means confident 
of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declinetl 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 349 

with some alarm. In tlie girl's scliool, reading was proposed ; 
and as I felt tolerably equal to that art, I expressed my 
willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accord- 
ingly, and some half dozen girls relieved each other in 
reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to 
be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers ; and when 
they had blundered through three or four dreary passages 
concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of 
the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), 
I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that 
they only mounted to this exalted stave in the Ladder of 
Learning for the astonishment of a visitor ; and that at other 
times they keep upon its lower rounds ; but I should have 
been much better pleased and satisfied if I ha,d heard them 
exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood. 

As in every other place I visited, the Judges here were 
gentlemen of high character and attainments. I was in one 
of the courts for a few minutes, and found it like those to 
which I have abeady referred. A nuisance cause was 
trying ; there were not many spectators ; and the witnesses, 
counsel, and jury, formed a sort of family circle, sufficiently 
jocose and snug\ 

The society with which I mingled, was intelligent, courteous, 
and agreeable. The inhabitants of Cincinnati are proud of 
their city, as one of the most interesting in America : and 
with good reason : for beautiful and thriving as it is now, 
and containing, as it does, a population of fifty thousand 
souls, but two-and-fifty years have passed away since the 
ground on which it stands (bought at that time for a few 
dollars) was a wild wood, and its citizens were but a handful 
of dwellers in. scattered log huts upon the river's shore. 



350 A]vm£IOAJ!i NOTES 



CHAPTER XII. 

FROM CINCINNATI TO LOUISVILLE IN ANOTHER WESTERN STEAMBOAT; AND 
FROM LOUISVILLE TO ST. LOUIS IN ANOTHER. ST. LOUIS. 

IjEAving Cincinnati at eleven o'clock in tlie forenoon, vre 
embarked for Louisville in the Pike steam-boat, wbicli, 
carrying the mails, was a packet of a miicli better class than 
that in which we had come from Pittsburg. As this passage 
does not occupy more than twelve or thirteen hoiu-s, we 
arranged to go ashore that night : not coveting the distinction 
of sleeping in a state-room, when it was possible to sleep 
anywhere else. 

There chanced to be on board this boat, in addition to the 
usual dreary crowd of passengers, one PitchljTin, a chief of the 
Choctaw tribe of Indians, who sent in his card to me, and with 
whom I had the pleasure of a long conversation. 

He spoke English perfectly well, though he had not begun 
to learn the language, he told me, until he was a yoimg man 
groAvn. He had read many books ; and Scott's poetry 
appeared to have left a strong impression on his mind : 
especially the opening of The Lady of the Lake, and the 
great battle scene in Marmion, in which, no doubt from the 
congeniality of the subjects to his own pursuits and tastes, he 
had great interest and delight. He appeared to understand 
correctly all he had read ; and whatever fiction had enlisted 
his sympathy in its belief, had done so keenly and earnestly. 
I might almost say fiercely. He was dressed in our ordinary 
every-day costume, which hung about his fine figure loosely, 
and with indifierent grace. On my telling him that I 
regretted not to see him in his o-^ti attire, he threw up his 
right arm, for a moment, as though he were brandishing 
some heavy weapon, and answered, as he let it fall again, that 
his race were losing many things besides their dress, and 
would soon be seen upon the eai^th no more : but he wore it 
at home, he added proudly. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 351 

He told me tliat he had been away jfrom his home, west of 
the Mississippi, seventeen months : and was now returning. 
He had been chiefly at Washington on some negotiations 
pending between his Tribe and the Government : which were 
not settled yet (he said in a melancholy way), and he feared 
never would be : for what could a fcAV poor Indians do, 
against such well-slvilled men of business as the whites ? He 
had no love for Washington ; tired of towns and cities very 
soon ; and longed for the Forest and the Prairie. 

I asked him what he thought of Congress ? He answered, 
"with a smile, that it wanted dignity, in an Indian's eyes. 

He would very much like, he said, to see England before 
he died ; and spoke with much interest about the great things 
to be seen there. When I told him of that chamber in the 
British Museum wherein are preserved household memorials 
of a race that ceased to be, thousands of years ago, he was 
very attentive, and it was not hard to see that he had a 
reference in his mind to the gradual fading away of his own 
people. 

This led us to speak of Mr. Catlin's gallery, which he praised 
highly : observing that his own portrait was among the 
collection, and that all the likenesses were ''elegant." Mr. 
Cooper, he said, had painted the Red Man well ; and so would 
I, he knew, if I would go home with him and hunt buffaloes, 
which he was quite anxious I should do. When I told him 
that supposing I went, I should not be very Kkely to damage 
the buffaloes much, he took it as a great joke and laughed 
heartily. 

He was a remarkably handsome man; some years past 
forty I should judge ; with long black hair, an aquiline nose, 
broad cheek bones, a sun-burnt complexion, and a very bright, 
keen, dark, and piercing eye. There were but twenty 
thousand of the Choctaws left, he said, and their number was 
decreasing every day. A few of his brother chiefs had been 
obliged to become civilised, and to make themselves accjuainted 
with what the whites knew, for it was their only chance ol 
existence. But they were not many ; and the rest were as 
they always had been. He dwelt on this : and said several 
times that unless they tried to assimilate themselves to their 
conquerors, they must be swept away before the strides of 
civilised society. 

When we shook hands at parting, I told him he must come 



352 AMERICAN NOTES 

to England, as lie longed to see tlie land so mucli : that I 
slioiild hope to see him there, one day : and that I could 
promise him he would be well received and kindly treated. 
He was evidently pleased by this assurance, though he 
rejoined with a good-humoured smile and an arch shake of his 
head, that the English used to be very fond of the Red Men 
when they wanted their help, but had not cared much for 
them, since. 

He took his leave ; as stately and complete a gentleman of 
Nature's making/as ever I beheld; and moved among the 
people in the boat, another kind of being. He sent me a 
lithographed portrait of himself soon afterwards ; very like, 
though scarcely handsome enough; which I have carefully 
preserved in memory of our brief acquaintance. 

There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this 
day's journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We 
slept at the Gait House ; a splendid hotel ; and were as hand- 
somely lodged as though we had been in Paris, rather than 
hundreds of miles bej^ond the AUeghanies. 

The city presenting no objects of suflicient interest to detain 
us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another 
steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a subiu^b 
called Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing 
through a canal. 

The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through 
the toT\Ti, which is regular and cheerful : the streets being laid 
out at right angles, and planted with young trees. Tlie 
buildings are smoky and blackened, from the use of bituminous 
coal, but an Englishman is well used to that appearance, and 
indisposed to quarrel with it. There did not appear to be 
much business stirring ; and some unfinished buildings and 
improvements seemed to intimate that the city had been over- 
built in the ardour of " going a-liead," and was sufl^ring 
under the re-action consequent upon such feverish forcing of 
its powers. 

On our way to Portland, we passed a " Magistrate's office," 
which amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than 
any police establishment : for tliis awful Institution was 
nothing but a little lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open 
to the street ; wherein two or three figures (I presume the 
inagistrate and his myrmidons) were basking in the sunshine, 
the very efiigies of languor and repose. It was a perfect 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 358 

picture of Justice retired from business for want of customers ; 
ker sword and scales sold off; napping comfortably with her 
legs upon the table. 

Here, as elsewhere in these partSj^ the road was perfectly 
alive with pigs of all ages ; lying about in every direction, fast 
asleep ; or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had 
always a sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found 
a constant source of amusement, when all others failed, in 
watching their proceedings. As we were riding along this 
morning, I observed a little incident between two youthful 
pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly comical 
and grotesque at the time, though I daresay, in telling, it is 
tame enough. 

One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several 
straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investiga- 
tions in a dunghill), was walking deliberately on, profoundly 
thinking, when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry 
hole unseen by him, rose up immediately before his startled 
eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was pig's whole mass 
of blood so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed 
for a moment and then shot off as hard as he could go : his 
excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a dis- 
tracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began 
to reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appear- 
ance ; and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual 
degrees; until at last he stopped, and faced about. There 
was his brother, with the mud upon him glazing in the sun, 
yet staring out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his 
proceedings ! He was no sooner assured of this ; and he 
assured himself so carefully that one may almost say he 
shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better ; than he came 
back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took 
off a piece of his tail ; as a caution to him to be careful what 
he was about for the future, and never to play tricks v/ith his 
family any more. 

AYe found the steamboat in the canal, ^^aiting for the slow 
process of getting through the lock, and went on board, where 
we shortly afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person 
of a certain Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is 
of the moderate height of seven feet eight inches, in his 
stockings. 

There never was a race of people who so completely gave 

AA 



354 AMERICAN NOTES 

the lie to history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers 
have so cruelly libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging 
about the world, constantly catering for their cannibal larders, 
and perpetually going to market in an unlawful manner, they 
are the meekest people in any man's acquaintance : rather in- 
clining to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a 
quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness their 
characteristics, that I confess I look upon that youth who dis- 
tinguished himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive 
persons, as a false-hearted brigand, who, pretending to philan- 
thropic motives, was secretly influenced only by the wealth 
stored up within their castles, and the hope of plunder. And 
I lean the more to this opinion from finding that even the 
historian of those exploits, with all his partiality for his hero, 
is fain to admit that the slaughtered monsters in question were 
of a very innocent and simple turn ; extremely guileless and 
ready of belief ; lending a credulous ear to the most impro- 
bable tales ; sufi'ering themselves to be easily entrapped into 
pits ; and even (as in the case of the Welsh Giant) with an 
excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping them- 
selves open, rather than hint at the possibility of their guests 
being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand, and 
hocus-pocus. 

The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the 
truth of this position. He had a weakness in the region of 
the knees, and a trustfulness in his long face, which appealed 
even to five-feet-nine for encouragement and support. He was 
only twenty-five years old, he said, and had grown recently, 
for it had been found necessary to make an addition to the 
legs of his inexpressibles. At fifteen he was a short boy, and 
in those days his English father and his Irish mother had 
rather snubbed him, as being too small of stature to sustain 
the credit of the family. He added that his health had not 
been good, though it was better now ; but short people are not 
wanting who whisper that he drinks too hard. 

I understand he drives a haclcney-coach, though how ho 
does it, unless he stands on the footboard behind, and lies 
along the roof upon his chest, with his chin in the box, it 
would be difficult to comprehend. He brought his gun with 
him, as a curiosity. Christened ''Tlie Little Rifle," and dis- 
played outside a shop-window, it would make the fortune of any 
retail business in Holborn. When he had shown himself and 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. • 355 

talked a little while, lie withdrew with his pocket-instrument, 
and went bobbing down the cabin, among- men of six feet 
high and upwards, like a lighthouse walking among lamp- 
posts. 

Within a few minutes afterwards, we were out of the canal, 
and in the Ohio river again. 

The arrangements of the boat were like those of the 'Mes- 
senger, and the passengers were of the same order of people. 
We fed at the same times, on the same kind of viands, in the 
same dull manner, and with the same observances. The com- 
pany appeared to be oppressed by the same tremendous con- 
cealments, and had as little capacit}^ of enjoyment or light- 
heartedness. I never in my life did see such listless, heavy 
dulness as brooded over these meals : the very recollection of 
it weighs me down, and makes me, for the moment, wretched. 
Reading and writing on my knee, in our little cabin, I really 
dreaded the coming of the hour that summoned us to table ; 
and was as glad to escape from it again, as if it had been a 
penance or a punishment. Healthy cheerfulness and good 
spirits forming a part of the banquet, I could soak my crusts 
in the fountain with Le Sage's stroUing player, and revel in 
their glad enjoyment : but sitting down with so many fellow- 
animals to ward off thirst and hunger as a business ; to empty, 
each creature his Yahoo's trough as quickly as he can, and 
then slink sullenly away ; to have these social sacraments 
stripped of everything but the mere greedy satisfaction of the 
natural cravings ; goes so against the grain with me, that I 
seriously believe the recollection of these funeral feasts will be 
a waking nightmare to me all my life. 

There was some relief in this boat, too, which there had 
not been in the other, for the captain (a blunt good-natured 
fellow), had his handsome wife with him, who was disposed 
to be lively and agreeable, as were a few other lady-passengers 
who had their seats about us at the same end of the table. 
But nothing could have made head against the depressing 
influence of the general body. There was a magnetism of 
dulness in them which would have beaten down the most 
facetious companion that the earth ever knew. A jest would 
have been a crime, and a smile would have faded into a 
grinning horror. Such deadly leaden people ; such systematic 
plodding weary insupportable heaviness ; such a mass of 
animated indigestion in respect of all that was genial, jovial, 



856 AMERICAN NOTES 

frank f social, or hearty ; never, sure, was brought togetlier 
elsewhere since the world began. 

Nor was the scenery, as we approached the junction of the 
Ohio and Mississippi rivers, at all inspiriting in its influence. 
The trees were stunted in their growth ; the banks were low 
and flat ; the settlements and log cabins fewer in number : 
their inliabitants more wan and wretched than any we had 
encountered yet. No songs of bii*ds were in the air, no 
pleasant scents, no moving lights and shadows from swift 
passing clouds. Hour after hour, the changeless glare of the 
hot, unwinking sky, shone upon the same monotonous objects. 
Hour after hour, the river rolled along, as wearily and slowly 
as the time itself. 

At length, upon the morning of the third day, we arrived 
at a spot so much more desolate than any we had yet beheld, 
that the forlornest places we had passed, were, in comparison 
with it, full of interest. At the junction of the two rivers, 
on ground so flat and low and marsh}^, that at certain seasons 
of the 3^ear it is inundated to the house-tops, lies a breeding- 
place of fever, ague, and death ; vaunted in England as a mine 
of Golden Hope, and speculated in, on the faith of monstrous 
representations, to many people's ruin. A dismal swamp, on 
which the half-built houses rot away : cleared here and there 
for the space of a few j'-ards ; and teeming, then, with rank 
unwholesome vegetation, in whose baleful shade the wretched 
wanderers who are tempted hither, droop, and die, and lay 
their bones ; the hateful jMississippi circling and eddying 
before it, and turning ofi" upon its southern course a slimy 
monster hideous to behold; a hotbed of disease, an ugly 
sepulchre, a grave uncheered by any gleam of promise : a 
place without one single quality, in earth or air- or water, to 
commend it : such is this dismal Cairo. 

But what words shall describe the ISIississippi, great father 
of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children 
like him ! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles 
wide, running liquid mud, six miles an. hour : its strong and 
frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs 
and whole forest trees : now twining themselves together in 
great rafts, from the interstices of which a secloy lazy foam 
works up, to float upon the water's top : now rolling past like 
monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted 
hair ; now glancing singly by like giant leeches ; and now 



FOE GENERAL CIRCULATION. 857 

xrrithin^ round and round in the vortex of some small whirl- 
pool like TTOunded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, 
the marshes swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few 
and far apart, their inmates hollow-cheeked and pale, the 
weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and 
crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything : nothing 
pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers 
every night upon the dark horizon. 

For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking con- 
stantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those 
more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are 
the hidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the 
tide. When the nights are very dark, the look-out stationed 
in the head of the boat, knows by the ripple of the water if 
any great impediment be near at hand, and rings a bell beside 
him, which is the signal for the engine to be stopped ; but 
always in the night this bell has work to do, and after every 
ring, there comes a blow which renders it no easy matter to 
remain in bed. 

The dechne of day here was very gorgeous ; tinging the 
firmament deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone 
of the arch above us. As the sun went down behind the 
bank, the slightest blades of grass upon it seemed to become 
as distinctly visible as the arteries in the skeleton of a leaf, 
and when, as it slowly sank, the red and golden bars upon 
the water grew dimmer, and dimmer yet, as if they were 
sinking too ; and all the glowing colours of departing day 
paled, inch by inch, before the sombre night ; the scene 
became a thousand times more lonesome and more dreary 
than before, and all its influences darkened with the sky. 

We drank the muddy water of this river while we were 
upon it. It is considered wholesome by the natives, and is 
something more opaque than gruel. I have seen water like 
it at the Filter-shops, but nowhere else. 

On the fourth night after leaving Louisville, we reached St. 
Louis, and here I witnessed the conclusion of an incident, 
trifling enough in itself but very pleasant to see, which had 
interested me during the whole journey. 

There was a little woman on board, with a little baby ; and 
both little woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, 
bright-eyed, and fair to see. The little woman had been 
passing a long time with her sick mother in New York, and 



358 AMERICAN NOTES 

had left lier home in St. Louis, in that condition in which 
ladies who truly love their lords desire to be. The baby was 
born in her mother's house ; and she had not seen her hus- 
band (to whom she was now returning), for twelve months ; 
having left him a month or two after their marriage. 

Well, to be sure there never was a little woman so full of 
hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this little 
woman was : and all day long she wondered whether " He " 
would be at the wharf; and whether *' He " had got her 
letter ; and whether, if she sent the baby ashore by somebody 
else, " He" would know it, meeting it in the street : which, 
seeing that he had never set e^^es upon it in his life, was not 
very likely in the abstract, but was probable enough, to the 
young mother. She was such an artless little creature ; and 
was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state ; and let out all 
this matter clinging close about her heart, so freely ; that all 
the other lady-passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as 
she ; and the captain (who heard all about it from his wife), 
was wondrous sly, I promise you : inquiring, every time we 
met at table, as in forgetfulness, whether she expected any- 
body to meet her at St. Louis, and whether she would want 
to go ashore the night we reached it (but he supposed she 
wouldn't), and cutting many other dry jokes of that nature. 
There was one little weazen, dried-apple-faced old woman, who 
took occasion to doubt the constancy of husbands in such cir- 
cumstances of bereavement ; and there was another lady (with 
a lap dog) old enough to moralise on the lightness of human 
affections, and yet not so old that she could help nursing the 
baby, now and then, or laughing with the rest, when the little 
woman called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner 
of fantastic questions concerning him in the joy of her heart. 

It was something of a blow to the little woman, that when 
we were within twenty miles of our destination, it became 
clearly necessary to put this baby to bed. But she got over 
it with the same good humour ; tied a liandkerchief round 
her head ; and came out into the little gallery with the rest. 
Then, such an oracle as she became in reference to the 
localities ! and such facetiousness as was displayed by the 
married ladies ! and such sympathy as was shown by the 
single ones ! and such peals of laughter as the little woman 
herself (who would just as soon have cried) greeted every jest 
with! 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 859, 

At last, there were tlie lights of St. Louis, and here was 
the wharf, and those were tlie stex3S : and the little woman 
covering her face with her hands, and laughing (or seeming 
to laugh) more than ever, ran into her own cabin, and shut 
herself up. I have no doubt that in the charming inconsis- 
tency of such excitement, she stopped her ears, lest she should 
hear '^ Him " asking for her : but I did not see her do it. 

Then, a great crowd of people rushed on board, though the 
boat was not yet made fast, but was wandering about, among 
the other boats, to find a landing place : and everybody looked 
for the husband : and nobody saw him : when, in the midst 
of us all — Heaven knows how she ever got there — there was 
the little woman clinging with both arms tight round the neck 
of a fine, good-looking, sturdy young fellow ! and in a moment 
afterwards, there she was again, actually clapping her little 
hands for joy, as she dragged him through the small door of 
her small cabin, to look at the baby as he lay asleep ! 

"We went to a large hotel, called the Planter's House : built 
like an English hospital, with long passages and bare walls, 
and skylights above the room-doors for the free circulation of 
air. There were a great many boarders in it ; and as many 
lights sparkled and glistened from the windows down into the 
street below, when we clrove up, as if it had been illuminated 
on some occasion of rejoicing. It is an excellent house, and 
the proprietors have most bountiful notions of providing the 
creature comforts. Dining alone with my wife in our own 
room, one day, I counted fourteen dishes on the table at once. 
In the old French portion of the town, the thoroughfares 
are narrow and crooked, and some of the houses are very 
quaint and picturesque : being built of wood, with tumble- 
down galleries before the windows, approachable by stairs or 
rather ladders from the street. There are queer little barbers' 
shops and driDking-houses too, in this quarter ; and abundance 
of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such as may 
be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with 
high garret gable- windows perking into the roofs, have a 
kind of French shrug about them ; and being lop-sided wath 
age, appear to hold their heads askew, besides, as if they 
were grimacing in astoDishraent at the American Improve- 
ments. 

It is hardly necessary to say, that these consist of wharves 
and warehouses, and new buildings in all directions ; and of 



860 AMERICAN NOTES 

a great many vast plans wliicli are still " progressing." Al- 
ready, however, some very good houses, broad sti-eets, and 
marble-fi-onted shops, have gone so far a -head as to be in a 
state of completion ; and the town bids fair in a few years to 
improve considerably : though it is not likely ever to vie, in 
point of elegance or beauty, with Cincinnati. 

The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by the early 
French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the jDublic insti- 
tutions are a Jesuit College ; a convent for "the Ladies of 
the Sacred Heart ; " and a large chapel attached to the college, 
which was in course of erection at the time of my visit, and 
was intended to be consecrated on the second of December in 
the next year. The architect of this building, is one of the 
reverend fathers of the school, and the works proceed under 
his sole direction. The organ will be sent from Belgium. 

In addition to these establishments, there is a Roman 
Catholic cathedi'al, dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier ; and a 
hospital, founded by the munificence of a deceased resident, 
who was a member of that church. It also sends missionaries 
from hence among the Indian tiibes. 

The Unitarian church is represented, in this remote place, 
as in most other parts of America, by a gentleman of great 
worth and excellence. The poor have good reason to re- 
member and bless it; for it befriends them, and aids the 
cause of rational education, without anv sectarian or selfish 
views. It is liberal in all its actions j of kind construction ; 
and of wide benevolence. 

There are three fi:ee-schools already erected, and in full 
operation in this city. A fourth is building, and will soon be 
opened. 

No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he 
dwells in (unless he is going away from it), and I shall 
therefore, I have no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants 
of St. Louis, in questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate, 
and in hinting that I think it must rather dispose to fever, in 
the summer and autumnal seasons. Just adding, that it is 
very hot, lies among great rivers, and has vast tracts of un- 
drained swampy land ai'ound it, I leave the reader to form 
his own opinion. 

As I had a great desire to see a Prairie before turning back 
from the furthest point of my wanderings ; and as some gen- 
tlemen of the town had, in their hospitable consideration, an 



FOR aiiXERAL CIRCULATION. 361 

equal desire to gratify me ; a day was fixed, before my de- 
parture, for an expedition to tlie Looking-Glass Prairie, wliicli 
is within thirty miles of the town. Deeming it possible that 
my readers may not object to know what kind of thing such a 
gipsy party may be at that distance from home, and among 
what sort of objects it moves, I wiU describe the jaunt in 
another chapter. 



362 AMRBICA-N NOTES 



CHAPTEH XIII. 

A JAUNT TO THE LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE AND BACK. 

I MAY premise that tlie word Prairie is variously pronounced 
paraaer, parearer, and paroarer. The latter mode of pronuncia- 
tion is perhaps the most in favour. 

We were fourteen in aU, and all young men : indeed it is a 
singular though very natural feature in the society of these 
distant settlements, that it is mainly composed of adventurous 
persons in the prime of life, and has very few grey heads 
among it. There were no ladies : the trip being a fatiguing 
one : and we were to start at five o'clock in the morning 
punctually. 

I was called at four, that I might be certain of keeping 
nobody waiting ; and having got some bread and milli for 
breakfast, threw up the window and looked down into the 
street, expecting to see the whole party busily astir, and great 
preparations going on below. But as everj'thing was very 
quiet, and the street presented that hopeless aspect with which 
five o'clock in the morning is familiar elsewhere, I deemed it 
as well to go to bed again, and went accordingly. 

I awoke again at seven o'clock, and by that time the 
party had assembled, and were gathered round, one light 
carriage, with a very stout axletree ; one something on wheels 
like an amateur carrier's cart; one double phaeton of great 
antiquity and unearthly construction ; one gig with a great 
hole in its back and a broken head ; and one rider on horse- 
back who was to go on before. I got into the first coach with 
three companions ; the rest bestowed themselves in the other 
vehicles ; two large baskets were made fast to the lightest ; 
two large stone jars in wicker cases, technically known as 
demi -Johns, were consigned to the "least rowdy" of the party 
for safe keeping ; and the procession moved ofi" to the ferry- 
boat, in which it was to cross the river bodily, men, horses, 
carriages, and all, as the manner in these pai'ts is. 



FOE GENERAL CIRCULATION. 863 

"We got over the river in due course, and mustered again 
before a little wooden box on wheels, hove down all aslant in 
a morass, with '' merchant tailor" painted in very large 
letters over the door. Having settled the order of proceeding, 
and the road to be taken, we started off once more and began 
to make our way through an ill-favoured Black Hollow, called, 
less expressively, the American Bottom. 

The previous day had been — not to say hot, for the term is 
weak and lukewarm in its power of conveying an idea of the 
temperature. The to"wn had been on fire ; in a blaze. But 
at night it had come on to rain in torrents, and all night long 
it had rained without cessation. We had a pair of very 
strong horses, but travelled at the rate of little more than a 
couple of miles an hour, through one unbroken slough of 
black mud and water. It had no variety but in dept^i. Now 
it was only half over the wheels, now it hid the axletree, and 
now the coach sank down in it almost to the windows. The 
air resounded in all directions with the loud chirping of the 
frogs, who, with the pigs (a coarse, ugly breed, as unwhole- 
some-looking as though they were the spontaneous growth of 
the country), had the whole scene to themselves. Here and 
there we passed a log hut ; but the wi^etched cabins were wide 
apart and thinly scattered, for though the soil is very rich in this 
place few people can exist in such a deadly atmosphere. On 
either side of the track, if it deserve the name, was the thick 
^*bush;" and everywhere was stagnant, slimy, rotten, filthy 
water. 

As it is the custom in these parts to give a horse a gallon 
or so of cold water whenever he is in a foam with heat, we 
halted for that purpose, at a log inn in the wood, far removed 
from any other residence. It consisted of one room, bare -roofed 
and bare-walled of course, with a loft above. The ministering 
priest was a swarthy young savage, in a shirt of cotton print 
like bed-furniture, and a pair of ragged trousers. There were 
a couple of young boys, too, nearly naked, lying idly by tha 
well ; and they, and he, and the traveller at the inn, turned 
out to look at us. 

The traveller was an old man with a grey grisly beard 
two inches long, a shaggy moustache of the same hue, and 
enormous eyebrows ; which almost obscured his lazy, semi- 
drunken glance, as he stood regarding us with folded arms : 
poising himself alternately upon his toes and heels. On being 



364 AMERICAN NOTES 

addressed by one of the party, lie drew nearer, and said, 
rubbing his chin (which scraped under his horny hand like 
fresh gravel beneath a nailed shoe), that he was from Dela- 
ware, and had lately bought a farm ''down there" pointing 
into one of the marshes where the stunted trees were thickest. 
He was "going," he added to St. Louis, to fetch his family, 
whom he had left behind ; but he seemed in no great hurry to 
bring on these incumbrances, for when we moved away, he 
loitered back into the cabin, and was plainly bent on stopping 
there so long as his money lasted. He was a great politician 
of course, and explained his opinions at some length to one of 
our company ; but I only remember that he concluded with 
two sentiments, one of which was. Somebody for ever ; and 
the other. Blast everybody else ! which is by no means a bad 
abstract of the general creed in these matters. 

When the horses were swollen out to about t^dce their 
natural dimensions (there seems to be an idea here, that this 
kind of inflation improves their going), we went forward 
again, through mud and mire, and damp, and festering heat, 
and brake and bush, attended always by the music of the frogs 
and pigs, until nearly noon, when we halted at a place called 
BelleviUe. 

Belleville was a small collection of wooden houses, huddled 
together in the very heart of the bush and swamp. INIany of 
them had singularly bright doors of red and yellow; for the 
place had been lately visited by a travelling painter, " who got 
along," as I was told, "by eating his way." The criminal 
court was sitting, and was at that moment trying some 
criminals for horse-stealing : with whom it would most Kkely 
go hard : for live stock of all kinds being necessarily very 
much exposed in the woods, is held by the community in 
rather higher value than human life; and for this reason, 
juries generally make a point of finding aU men indicted for 
cattle-stealing, guilty, whether or no. 

The horses belonging to the bar, the judge, and witnesses, 
were tied to temporary racks set up roughly in the road ; by 
which is to be understood, a forest path, nearly knee-deep in 
mud and slime. 

There was an hotel in this place which, like all hotels in 
America, had its large dining-room for the public table. It 
was an odd, shambling, low-roofed out-house, half-cowshed 
and half-kitchen, with a coarse brown canvas table-cloth, 



FOR GENERAL CmCULATION. 365 

and tin sconces stuck against the walls, to hold candles at 
supper-time. The horseman had gone forward to have coffee 
and some eatables prepared, and they were by this time nearly 
ready. He had ordered '' wheat-bread and chicken-fixings," 
in preference to ''corn-bread and common doings." The 
latter kind of refection includes only pork and bacon. The 
former comprehends broiled ham, sausages, veal cutlets, steaks, 
and such other viands of that nature as may be supposed, by 
a tolerably wide poetical construction, ''to fix:" a chicken 
comfortably in the digestive organs of any lady or gentleman. 

On one of the door-posts at this inn, was a tin plate, 
whereon was inscribed in characters of gold " Doctor Crociis; " 
and on a sheet of paper, pasted up by the side of this plate was 
a written announcement that Dr. Crocus would that evening 
deliver a lecture on Phrenology for the benefit of the Belleville 
public ; at a charge for admission, of so much a head. 

Straying up-stairs, during the preparation of the chicken- 
fixings, I happened to pass the Doctor's chamber ; and as the 
door stood wide open, and the room was empty, I made bold 
to peep in. 

It was a bare, unfurnished, comfortless room, with an un- 
framed portrait hanging up at the head of the bed ; a likeness, 
I take it, of the Doctor, for the forehead was fully displayed, 
and great stress was laid by the artist upon its phrenological 
developments. The bed itself was covered with an old patch- 
work counterpane. The room was destitute of carpet or of 
curtain. There was a damp fire-place without any stove, full 
of wood ashes ; a chair, and a very small table ; and on the last 
named piece of furniture was displayed, in grand array, the 
doctor's library, consisting of some half-dozen greasy old books. 

Now, it certainly looked about the last apartment on the 
whole earth out of which any man would be likely to get any- 
thing to do him good. But the door, as I have said, stood 
coaxingly open, and plainly said in conjunction with the 
chair, the portrait, the table, and the books, " Walk in, gentle- 
men, walk in ! Don't be ill, gentlemen, when you may be 
well in no time. Doctor Crocus is here, gentlemen, the 
celebrated Doctor Crocus ! Doctor Crocus has come all this 
way to cure you, gentlemen. If you haven't heard of Doctor 
Crocus, it 's your fault, gentlemen, who live a little way out of 
the world here ; not Doctor Crocus's. Walk in, gentlemen, 
walk in ! " 



366 AMERICAN NOTES 

In the passage below, when I went down stairs- ag-am, was 
Doctor Crocus himself. A crowd had flocked in from the 
Court House, and a voice from among them called out to the 
landlord, ''Colonel! introduce Doctor Crocus." 

•'* Mr. Dickens," says the colonel, ''Doctor Crocus." 

Upon which Doctor Crocus, who is a tall, fine-looking 
Scotchman, but rather fierce and warlike in appearance for a 
professor of the peaceful art of healing, bursts out of the con- 
course with his right arm extended, and his chest thrown out 
as far as it will possibly come, and says : 

" Your countryman, sir ! " 

^^Tiere «pon Doctor Crocus and I shake hands ; and Doctor 
Crocus looks as if I didn't by any means realise his expecta- 
tions, which, in a linen blouse, and a great straw hat with 
a green ribbon, and no gloves, and my face and nose profusely 
ornamented with the stings of mosquitoes and the bites of bugs, 
it is very likely I did not. 

" Long in these parts, sir?" says I. 

*' Three or four months, sir," says the Doctor. 

"Do you think of soon returning to the old country, sir?'* 
says I. 

Doctor Crocus makes no verbal answer, but gives me an 
imploring look, which says so plainly ' Will you ask me that 
again, a little louder, if you please ? ' that I repeat the 
question. 

" Think of soon returning to the old country, sir ! " repeats 
the Doctor. 

"To the old country, sir," I rejoin. 

Doctor Crocus looks round upon the crowd to observe the 
effect he produces, rubs his hands, and says, in a very loud 
voice : 

"Not yet awhile, sir, not yet. You won't catch me at that 
just yet, sir. I am a little too fond of freedom for that, sir. 
Ila, ha ! It's not so easy for a man to tear himself from a 
free country such as this is, sir. Ha, ha ! No, no ! Ha, ha ! 
None of Ihat till one's obliged to do it, sir. No, no ! " 

As Doctor Crocus says these latter words, he shakes his 
head, knowingly, and lauHis again. Many of the bystanders 
shali;e their heads in concert with the doctor, and laugh too, 
and look at each other as much as to say, ' A pretty bright 
and first-rate sort of chap is Crocus ! ' and unless I am very 
much mistaken, a good many people went to the lecture that 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 867 

ni2:lit, who never ttLOught about phrenology, or aliout Doctor 
Crocus either, in all their lives before. 

From Belleville, we went on, through the same desolate 
kind of waste, and constantly attended, without the interval of 
a mc/ment, by the same music ; until, at three o'clock in the 
afternoon, we halted once more at a village called Lebanon to 
inflate the horses again, and give them some corn besides : of 
which they stood much in need. Pending this ceremony, I 
walked into the village, where I met a full-sized dwelling- 
house coming down-hill at a round trot, drawn by a score or 
more of oxen. 

The public-house was so very clean and good a one, that 
the managers of the jaunt resolved to return to it and put up 
there for the night, if possible. This course decided on, and 
the horses being well refreshed, we again pushed forward, 
and came upon the Prairie at sunset. 

It would be difficult to say why, or how — though it was 
possibly from having heard and read so much about it — but 
the effect on me was disappointment. Looking towards the 
setting sun, there lay, stretched out before my view, a vast 
expanse of level ground ; unbroken, save by one thin line of 
trees, which scarcely amounted to a scratch upon the great 
blank ; until it met the glowing sky, wherein it seemed to 
dip : mingling with its rich colours, and mellowing in its 
distant blue. There it lay, a tranquil sea or lake without 
water, if such a simile be admissible, with the day going 
down Tipon it : a few birds wheeling here and there : and 
solitude and silence reigning paramount around. But the 
grass was not yet high ; there were bare black patches on the 
ground; and the few wild flowers that the eye could see, were 
poor, and scanty. Great as the picture was, its very flatness 
and extent, which left nothing to the imagination, tamed it 
down and cramped its interest. I felt little of that sense of 
freedom and exhilaration which a Scottish heath inspires, or 
even our Euglish downs awaken. It was lonely and wild, 
but oppressive in its barren monotony. I felt that in tra- 
versing the Prairies, I could never abandon myself to the scene, 
forgetful of all else ; as I should do instinctively, were the 
heuther underneath my feet, or an iron-bound coast beyond ; 
but should often glance towards the distant and frequently 
receding line of the horizon, and wish it gained and passed. 
It is not a scene to be forgotten, but it is scarcely one, I tliink 



868 AMERICAN NOTES 

(at all events, as I saw it), to remember with, mucli pleasure, 
or to covet tlie looking-on again, in after life. 

We encamped near a solitary log house, for the sake of its 
water, and dined upon the plain. The "baskets contained 
roast fowls, buffalo's tongue (an exquisite dainty, by the way), 
liam, bread, cheese and butter; biscuits, champagne, sherry, 
lemons and sugar for punch; and abundance of rough ice. 
The meal was delicious, and the entertainers were the soul of 
kindness and good humour. I have often recalled that 
cheerful party to my pleasant recollection since, and shall not 
easily forget, in junketings nearer home with friends of older 
date, my boon companions on the Prairie. 

Returning to Lebanon that night, we lay at the little inn 
at which we had halted in the afternoon. In point of clean- 
liness and comfort it would have suffered by no comparison 
with any village alehouse, of a homely kind, in England. 

Rising at five o'clock next morning, I took a walk about 
the village : none of the houses were strolling about to-day, 
but it was early for them yet, perhaps : and then amused my- 
self by lounging in a kind of farm-yard behind the tavern, of 
which the leading features were, a strange jumble of rough 
sheds for stables ; a rude colonnade, built as a cool place of 
summer resort; a deep well; a great earthen mound for 
keeping vegetables in, in winter time ; and a pigeon-house, 
whose little apertures looked, as they do in all pigeon-houses, 
very much too small for the admission of the plump and 
swelling-breasted birds who were strutting about ic, though 
they tried to get in never so hard. That interest exhausted, 
I took a survey of the inn's two parloui's, which were deco- 
rated with coloiu-ed prints of Washington, and President 
Madison, and of a white faced young lady (much speckled by 
the flies), Avho held up her gold neck-chain for the admiration 
of the spectator, and informed all admiring comers that she 
was *' Just Seventeen: " although I should have thought her 
older. In the best room were two oil portiaits of the kit-cat 
size, representing the landlord and his infant son ; both 
looking as bold as lions, and staring out of the canvas with 
an intensity that would have been cheap at any price. They 
were painted, I think, by the artist who had touched up the 
Belleville doors with red and gold ; for I seemed to recognise 
his style immediately. 

After breakfast, we started to return by a different -way 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 369 

from tliat wliicL. we had taken yesterday, and coming up at 
ten o'clock with an encampment of German emigrants carry- 
ing their goods in carts, wlio had made a rousing fire which 
they were just quitting, stopped there to refresh. And very 
pleasant the fire was ; for, hot though it had been yesterday, 
it was quite cold to-day, and the wind blew keenly. Looming 
in the distance, as we rode along, was another of the ancient 
Indian burial-places, called the Monk's Mound; in memory of 
a body of fanatics of the order of La Trappe, who founded a 
desolate convent there, many years ago, when there were no 
settlers within a thousand miles, and were all swept off by the 
pernicious climate : in which lamentable fatality, few rational 
people will suppose, perhaps, that society experienced any 
very severe deprivation. 

The track of to-day had the same features as the track of 
yesterday. There was the swamp, the bush, the perpetual 
chorus of frogs, the rank unseemly growth, the unwholesome 
steaming earth. Here and there, and frequently too, we 
encountered a solitary broken-down waggon, full of some new 
settler's goods. It was a pitiful sight to see one of these 
vehicles deep in the mire ; the axle-tree broken ; the wheel 
Ij'ing idly by its side ; the man gone miles away, to look for 
assistance ; the woman seated among their wandering house- 
hold gods, with a baby at her breast, a picture of forlorn, 
dejected patience ; the team of oxen crouching down mourn- 
fully in the mud, and breathing forth such clouds of vapour 
from their mouths and nostrils, that all the damp mist and 
fog around seemed to have come direct from them. 

In due time we mustered once again before the merchant 
tailor's, and having done so, crossed over to the city in the 
ferry-boat : passing, on the way, a spot called Bloody Island, 
the duelling-ground of St. Louis, and so designated in honour 
of the last fatal combat fought there, which was with pistols, 
breast to breast. Both combatants fell dead upon the 
ground ; and possibly some rational people may think of 
them, as of the gloomy madmen on the Monk's Mound, that 
they were no great loss to the community. 



370 AMERICAN NOTES 



CHAPTER XIY. 

SETUEN TO CINCINNATI. A STAGE-COACH RIDE FROM THAT CITY TO 
COLUMBUS, AND THENCE TO SANDUSKY. SO, BY LAKE EBLE, TO THE 
FALLS OF NIAGARA. 

As I had a desire to travel througli the interior of the state 
of Ohio, and to '' strike the lakes," as the phrase is, at a 
small town called Sandusky, to which that route would 
conduct us on our way to Niagara, we had to return from 
St. Louis by the way we had come, and to retrace our former 
track as far as Cincinnati. 

The day on which we were to take leave of St. Louis being 
very j&ne ; and the steam-boat which was to have started I 
don't know how early in the morning, postponing, for the 
third or fourth time, her departure until the afternoon ; we 
rode forward to an old French village on the river, called 
properly Carondelet, and nicknamed Vide Poche, and arranged 
that the packet should call for us there. 

The place consisted of a few poor cottages, and two or three 
public-houses ; the state of whose larders certainly seemed to 
justify the second designation of the village, for there was 
nothing to eat in any of them. At length, however, by going 
back some half a mile or so, we found a solitary house where 
ham and coffee were procurable ; and there we tarried to 
await the advent of the boat, which would come in sight from 
the green before the door, a long way off. 

It was a neat, unpretending village tavern, and we took our 
repast in a quaint little room with a bed in it, decorated with 
some old oil paintings, which in their time had probably done 
duty in a Catholic chapel or monastery. The fiire was very 
good, and served with great cleanliness. The house was kept 
by a characteristic old couple, with whom we had a long tfdk, 
and who were perhaps a very good sample of that kind of 
people in the West. 

The landlord was a dry, tough, hard-faced old feUow ('not 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 371 

so very old eitlier, for lie -vras but just turned sixty, I should 
think), who had been out with the militia in the last war with 
England, and had seen all kinds of service, — except a battle ; 
and he had been very near seeing that, he added : very near. 
He had all his life been restless and locomotive, with an 
irresistible desire for change ; and was still the son of his old 
self: for if he had nothing to keep him at home, he said 
(shghtly jerking his hat and his thumb towards the window 
of the room in which the old lady sat, as we stood talking in 
front of the house) he would clean up his musket, and be ofi 
to Texas to-morrow morning. He was one of the very many 
descendants of Cain proper to this continent, who seem 
destined from their birth to serve as pioneers in the great 
human army : who gladly go on from year to year extending 
its outposts, and leaving home after home behind them ; and 
die at last, utterly regardless of their graves being left 
thousands of miles behind, by the wandering generation who 
succeed. 

His wife was a domesticated kind-hearted old soul, who had 
come with him ''from the queen city of the world," which, it 
seemed, was Philadelphia ; but had no love for this Western 
country, and indeed had little reason to bear it any ; having 
seen her children, one by one, die here of fever, in the full 
prime and beauty of their youth. Her heart was sore, she 
said, to think of them ; and to talk on this theme, even to 
strangers, in that blighted place, so far from her old home, 
eased it somewhat, and became a melancholy pleasure. 

The boat appearing towards evening, we bade adieu to the 
poor old lady and her vagrant spouse, and making for the 
nearest landing-place, were soon on board The Messenger 
again, in our old cabin, and steaming down the Mississippi. 

If the coming up this river, slowly making head against 
the stream, be an irksome journey, the shooting down it with 
the turbid current is almost worse ; for then the boat, pro- 
ceeding at the rate of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, has to 
force its passage through a labyrinth of floating logs, which, 
in the dark, it is often impossible to see beforehand or avoid. 
All that night, the bell was never silent for five minutes at a 
time ; and after every ring the vessel reeled again, sometimes 
beneath a single blow, sometimes beneath a dozen dealt in 
quick succession, the lightest of which seemed more than 
enough to beat in her fr-ail keel, as though it had been 



372 AMERICAN NOTES 

pie-crust. Looking down upon the filtliy river after dart, it 
seemed to be alive with, monsters, as these black masses rolled 
upon the surface, or came starting up again, head first, when 
the boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of such 
obstructions, drove a few among them, for the moment, under 
water. Sometimes, the engine stopped dui'ing a long 
interval, and then before her and behind, and gathering close 
about her on all sides, were so many of these ill-favoured 
obstacles that she was fairly hemmed in ; the centre of a 
floating island; and was constrained to pause until they 
parted, somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, 
and opened by degrees a channel out. 

In good time next morning, however, we came again in 
sight of the detestable morass called Cairo; and stopping 
there to take in wood, lay alongside a barge, whose starting 
timbers scarcety held together. It was moored to the bank, 
and on its side was painted "Coffee House;" that being, I 
suppose, the floating paradise to which the people fly for 
shelter when they lose their houses for a month or two beneath 
the hideous waters of the Mississippi. But looking southward 
fi'om this point, we had the satisfaction of seeing that intoler- 
able river dragging its slimy length and ugly freight abruptly 
off towards New Orleans ; and passing a yellow line which 
stretched across the current, ^veve again upon the clear Ohio, 
never, I trust, to see the ISIississippi more, saving in troubled 
dreams and nightmares. Leaving it for the company of its 
sparkling neighbour, was like the transition from pain to ease, 
or the awakening from a horrible vision to cheerful realities. 

We arrived at Louisville on the foiu'th night, and gladly 
availed ourselves of its excellent hotel. Next day we went 
on in the Ben Franklin, a beautiful mail steam-boat, and 
reached Cincinnati shortly after midnight. Being by this 
time. nearly tired of sleeping upon shelves, we had remained 
awake to go ashore straiglitway ; and groping a passage across 
the dark decks of other boats, and amono- labvrinths of emrine- 
machinery and leaking casks of molasses, we reached the 
streets, knocked up the porter at the hotel where we had staid 
before, and were, to our great joy, safely housed soon after- 
wards. 

AVe rested but one day at Cincinnati, and then resumed our 
joui'ney to Sandusky. As it comprised two vai'ieties of stage- 
coach travelling, which, with those I have already glanced at, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCCLA.TION. 373 

compreliend the main cliaracteristics of this mode of transit in 
America, I will take the reader as our fellow-passenger, and 
pledge myseK to perform the distance with all possible 
despatch. 

Our place of destination in the first instance is Columbus. 
It is distant about a hundred and twenty miles from Cincinnati, 
but there is a macadamised road (rare blessing !) the whole 
way, and the rate of trayelling upon it is six miles an hour. 

We start at eight o'clock in the morning, in a great mail- 
coach, whose huge cheeks are so very ruddy and plethoric, 
that it appears to be troubled with a tendency of blood to the 
head. Dropsical it certainly is, for it will hold a dozen pas- 
sengers inside. But, wonderful to add, it is very clean and 
bright, being nearly new ; and rattles through the streets of 
Cincinnati gaily. 

Our way lies through a beautiful country, richly cultivated, 
and luxuriant in its promise of an abundant harvest. Some- 
times we pass a field where the strong bristling stalks of 
Indian corn look like a crop of walking-sticks, and sometimes 
an enclosure where the green wheat is springing up among a 
labyrinth of stumps ; the primitive worm-fence is universal, and 
an ugly thing it is ; but the farms are neatly kept, and, save 
for these diflerences, one might be travelling just now in 
Kent. 

We often stop to water at a roadside inn, which is always 
dull and silent. The coachman dismounts and fills his bucket, 
and holds it to the horses' heads. There is scarcely ever any 
one to help him; there are seldom any loungers standing 
round : and never any stable-company with jokes to crack. 
Sometimes, when we have changed our team, there is a diffi- 
culty, in starting again, arising out of the prevalent mode of 
breaking a young horse : which is to catch him, harness him 
against his will, and put him in a stage-coach without further 
notice : but we get on somehow or other, after a great many 
kicks and a violent struggle ; and jog on as before again. 

Occasionally, when we stop to change, some two or three 
half-drunlien loafers will come loitering out with their hands 
in their pockets, or will be seen kicking their heels in rocking- 
chairs, or lounging on the window-sill, or sitting on a rail 
within the colonnade : they have not often anything to say 
though, either to us or to each other, but sit there idly staring 
at the coach and horses. The landlord of the inn is usuiUly 



374 AMERICAN NOTES 

among tliem, and seems, of all the party, to be tlie least con- 
nected with, the business of the house. Indeed he is with 
reference to the tavern, what the driver is in relation to the 
coach and passengers : whatever happens in his sphere of 
action, he is quite indifferent, and perfectly easy in his mind. 

The frequent change of coachmen w^orks no change or 
variety in the coachman's character. He is always dirty, 
sullen, and taciturn. If he be capable of smartness of any 
kind, moral or physical, he has a faculty of concealing it which 
is truly marvellous. He never speaks to you as you sit beside 
him on the box, and if j^ou speak to him, he answers (if at 
all) in monosyllables. He points out nothing on the road, 
and seldom looks at anything : being, to all appearance, 
thoroughly weary of it, and of existence generally. As to 
doing the honours of his coach, his business, as I have said, is 
with the horses. The coach follows because it is attached to 
them and goes on wheels : not because you are in it. Some- 
times, towards the end of a long stage, he suddenly breaks 
out into a discordant fragment of an election song, but his 
face never sings along with him : it is only his voice, and not 
often that. 

He always chews and always spits, and never incumbers 
himself with a pocket-handkerchief. The consequences to the 
box passenger, especially when the wind blows towards him, 
are not agreeable. 

"V^rhenever the coach stops, and you can hear the voices of 
the inside passengers ; or whenever any bystander addresses 
them, or any one among them ; or they address each other ; 
you will hear one phrase repeated over and over and over 
again to the most extraordinary extent. It is an ordinary and 
unpromising phrase enough, being neither more nor less than 
*' Yes, sir; " but it is adapted to every variety of circumstance, 
and fills up every pause in the conversation. Thus : 

The time is one o'clock at noon. The scene, a place where 
we are to stay to dine on this journey. The coach di'ives up 
to the door of an inn. The da}^ is warm, and there are several 
idlers lingering about the tavern, and waiting for the public 
dinner. Among them, is a stout gentleman in a brown hat, 
swinging himself to and fro in a rocking-chair on the pave- 
ment. 

As the coach stops, a gentleman in a straw hat looks out of 
the window 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 875 

Straw Hat. (To the stout gentleman in the rocking- 
chair). I reckon that 's Judge Jefferson, ain't it ? 

Bkown Hat. (Still swinging ; speaking very slowly j and 
without any emotion whatever.) Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. Warm weather, Judge. 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. There was a snap of cold, last week. 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. Yes, sir. 

A pause. They look at each other very seriously. 

Straw Hat. I calculate you'll have got through that 
case of the corporation judge, by this time, now ? 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

Straw Hat. How did the verdict go, sir ? 

Brown Hat. For the defendant, sir. 

Straw Hat. (Interrogatively.) Yes, sir. 

Brown Hat. (Affirmatively.) Yes, sir. 

Both. (Musingly, as each gazes do\^Ti the street.) Yes, sir. 

Another pause. They look at each other again, still more 
seriously than before. 

Brown Hat. This coach is rather behind its time to-day, 
I guess. 

Straw Hat. (Doubtingly.) Yes, sir. 

Brown Hat. (Looking at his watch.) Yes, sir; nigh 
upon two hours. 

Straw Hat. (Raising his eyebrows in very great sur- 
prise.) Yes, sir ! 

Brown Hat. (Decisively, as he puts up his watch.) Yes, sir. 

All the other inside Passengers (among themselves.) 
Yes, sir. 

Coachman (in a very surly tone.) No it a'nt. 

Straw Hat (to the coachman.) Well, I don't know, sir. 
We were a pretty tall time coming that last fifteen mile. 
That 's a fact. 

The coachman making no reply, and plainly declining to 
enter into any controversy on a subject so far removed fi-om. 
his sjrmpathies and feelings, another passenger says "Yes, sir;" 
and the gentleman in the straw hat in acknowledgment of his 
courtesy, says ''Yes, sir, " to him, in return. The straw hat 
then inquires of the brown hat, whether that coach in which 
lie (the straw hat) then sits, is not a new one ? To which the 
brown hat again makes answer, " Yes, sir.'* 



376 AMERICAN NOTES 

Straw Hat. I tliouglit so. Pretty loud smell of varnisL., 
sir? 

Brown Hat. Yes, sir. 

All the other inside Passengers. Yes, sir. 

Brown Hat. (to tlie company in general.) Yes, sir. 

The conversational powers of the company having been "by 
this time pretty heavily taxed, the straw hat opens the door 
and gets out; and all the rest alight also. We dine soou 
afterwards with the boarders in the house, and have nothing 
to drink but tea and coffee. As they are both very bad and 
the water is worse, I ask for brandy ; but it is a Temperance 
Hotel, and spirits are not to be had for love or money. This 
preposterous forcing of unpleasant drinks down the reluctant 
throats of travellers is not at all uncommon in America, but 
I never discovered that the scruples of such wincing landlords 
induced them to preserve any unusually nice balance between 
the quality of their fare, and their scale of charges : on the 
contrary, I rather suspected them of diminishing the one and 
exalting the other, by way of recompense for the loss of their 
profit on the sale of spirituous liquors. After all, perhaps, 
the plainest course for persons of such tender consciences, 
would be, a total abstinence from tavern-keeping. 

Dinner over, we get into another vehicle which is ready at 
the door (for the coach has been changed in the interval), and 
resume our journey ; which continues through the same kind 
of country until evening, when we come to the town where we 
are to stop for tea and supper ; and having delivered the mail 
bags at the Post-office, ride through the usual wide street, 
lined with the usual stores and houses (the drapers always 
having hung up at their door, by way of sign, a piece of 
bright red cloth), to the hotel where this meal is prepared. 
There being many boarders here, we sit doT\Ti a large party, 
and a very melancholy one as usual. But there is a buxom 
hostess at the head of the table, and opposite, a simple Welsh 
schoolmaster with his wife and cliild ; who came here, on a 
speculation of greater promise than performance, to teach tho 
classics : and they are sufficient subjects of interest until the 
meal is over, and another coach is ready. In it we go on once 
more, lighted by a bright moon, until midnight ; when we 
stop to change the coach again, and remain for half an liour 
or so in a miserable room, with a blurred litliograph of 
Washington over the smoky fii'cplace, and a mighty jug of 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 877 

cold water on the table : to whicli refresliinent the moody 
passengers do so apply themselves that they would seem, to be, 
one and all, keen patients of Doctor Sangrado. Among them 
is a very little boy, who chews tobacco like a very big one ; 
and a droning gentleman, who talks arithmetically and statis- 
tically on all subjects, from poetry downwards ; and who always 
speaks in the same key, with exactly the same emphasis, and 
with very grave deliberation. He came outside just now, and 
told me how that the uncle of a certain young lady who had 
been spirited away and married by a certain captain, lived in 
these parts ; and how this uncle was so valiant and ferocious 
that he shouldn't wonder if he were to follow the said captain 
to England, " and shoot him down in the street, wherever he 
found him ; " in the feasibility of which strong measure I, 
being for the moment rather prone to contradiction, from 
feeling half asleep and very tired, declined to acquiesce : 
assuring him that if the uncle did resort to it, or gratified any 
other little whim of the like nature, he would find himself one 
morning prematurely throttled a£ the Old Bailey ; and that he 
would do well to make his will before he went, as he would 
certainly want it before he had been in Britain very long. 

On we go, all night, and by-and-by the day begins to 
break, and presently the first cheerful rays of the warm sun 
come slanting on us brightly. It sheds its light upon a 
miserable waste of sodden grass, and dull trees, and squalid 
huts, whose aspect is forlorn and grievous in the last degree. 
A very desert in the wood, whose growth of green is dank 
and noxious like that upon the top of standing water : where 
poisonous fungus grows in the rare footprint on the oozy 
ground, and sprouts like witches' coral from the crevices in 
the cabin wall and floor j it is a hideous thing to lie upon the 
very threshold of a city. But it was purchased years ago, 
and as the owner cannot be discovered, the State has been 
unable to reclaim it. So there it remains, in the midst of 
cultivation and improvement, like ground accursed, and made 
obscene and rank by some great crime. 

We reached Columbus shortly before seven o'clock, and 
stayed there, to refresh, that day and night : having excellent 
apartments in a very large unfinished hotel called the Neill 
House, which were richly fitted with the polished wood of the 
black walnut, and opened on a handsome portico and stone 
verandah, like rooms in some Italian mansion. The town is 



878 AMERICAN NOTES 

clean and pretty, and of course is '^ going to be " much larger. 
It is the seat of the State legislature of Ohio, and lays claim, 
in consequence, to some consideration and importance. 

There being no stage-coach next day, upon the road we 
"wished to take, I hired '' an extra," at a reasonable charge, to 
carry us to Tiffin ; a small town from whence there is a rail- 
road to Sandusky. This extra was an ordinary four-horse 
stage-coach, such as I have described, changing horses and 
drivers, as the stage-coach woiold, but was exclusively our 
own for the journey. To ensure our having horses at the 
proper stations, and being incommoded by no strangers, the 
proprietors sent an agent on the box, who was to accompany 
us the whole way through ; and thus attended, and bearing 
with us, besides, a hamper full of savoury cold meats, and 
fruit, and wine ; we started off again, in high spirits, at half- 
past six o'clock next morning, very much delighted to be by 
ourselves, and disposed to enjoy even the roughest journey. 

It was well for us that we were in this humour, for the road 
we went over that day, was certainly enough to have shaken 
tempers that were not resolutely at Set Fair, down to some 
inches below Stormy. At one time we were all flung together 
in a heap at the bottom of the coach, and at another we were 
crushing our heads against the roof. Now, one side was 
down deep in the mire, and we were holding on to the other. 
Now, the coach was lying on the tails of the two wheelers ; 
and now it was rearing up in the air, in a frantic state, with 
all four horses standing on the top of an insurmountable 
eminence, looking coolly back at it, as though they would say 
''unliarness us. It can't be done." The drivers on these 
roads, who certainly get over the ground in a manner which 
is quite miraculous, so twist and turn the team about in 
forcing a passage, corkscrew fashion, through the bogs and 
swamps, that it was quite a common circumstance on looking 
out of the window, to see the coachman with the ends of a 
pair of reins in his hands, apparently driving nothing, or 
playing at horses, and the leaders staring at one unexpectedly 
fi'om the back of the coach, as if they had some kiea of 
getting up behind. A great portion of the way was over 
what is called a corduroy road, which is made by throwing 
trunks of trees into a marsh, and leaving them to settle there. 
The very slightest of the jolts witli which the ponderous 
carriage feU from log to log, was enough, it seemed, to have 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 879 

dislocated all the bones in the human body. It would be 
impossible to experience a similar set of sensations, in any 
other circumstances, unless perhaps in attempting to go up to 
the top of St. Paul's in an omnibus. Never, never once, that 
day, was the coach in any position, attitude, or kind of motion 
to which we are accustomed in coaches. Never did it make 
the smallest approach to one's experience of the proceedings 
of any sort of vehicle that goes on wheels. 

Still, it was a fine day, and the temperature was delicious, 
and though we had left Summer behind us in the west, and 
were fast leaving Spring, we were moving towards Niagara 
and home. We alighted in a pleasant wood towards the 
middle of the day, dined on a fallen tree, and leaving our best 
fragments with a cottager, and our worst with the pigs (who 
swarm in this part of the country like grains of sand on the 
sea-shore, to the great comfort of our commissariat in Canada), 
we went forward again, gaily. 

As night came on, the track grew narrower and narrower, 
until at last it so lost itself among the trees, that the driver 
seemed to find his way by instinct. We had the comfort of 
knowing, at least, that there was no danger of his falling 
asleep, for every now and then a wheel would strike against 
an unseen stump with such a jerk, that he was fain to hold 
on pretty tight and pretty quick, to keep himself upon the 
box. Nor was there any reason to dread the least danger 
from furious driving, inasmuch as over that broken ground 
the horses had enough to do to walk ; as to shying, there was 
no room for that ; and a herd of wild elephants could not have 
run away in such a wood, with such a coach at their heels. 
So we stumbled along, quite satisfied. 

These stumps of trees are a curious feature in American 
travelling. The varying illusions they present to the unac- 
customed eye as it grows dark, are quite astonishing in their 
number and reality. Now, there is a Grecian urn erected in 
the centre of a lonely field ; now there is a woman weeping at 
a tomb ; now a very common-place old gentleman in a white 
waistcoat, with a thumb thrust into each arm-hole of his coat ; 
now a student poring on a book ; now a crouching negro ; 
now, a horse, a dog, a cannon, an armed man ; a hunch-back 
throwing off Jiis cloak and stepping forth into the light. 
They were often as entertaining to me as so many glasses in a 
magic lantern, and never took their shapes at my bidding, but 



380 AMERICAN NOTES 

seemed to force themselves upon me, whetlier I would or no ; 

and strange to say, I sometimes recognised in tliem counter- 
parts of figures once familiar to me in pictures attacked to 
cliildisli books, forgotten long ago. 

It soon became too dark, however, even for this amusement, 
and the trees were so close together that their dry branches 
rattled against the coach on either side, and obliged Us all to 
keep our heads within. It lightened too, for three whole 
hours ; each flash being very bright, and blue, and long ; and 
as the vivid streaks came darting in among the crowded 
branches, and the thunder rolled gloomily above the tree tops, 
one could scarcely help thinking that there were better 
neighbourhoods at such a time than thick woods afforded. 

At length, between ten and eleven o'clock at night, a few 
feeble lights appeared in the distance, and Upper Sandusky, 
an Indian village, where we were to stay till morning, lay 
before us. 

They were gone to bed at the log Inn, which was the only 
house of entertainment in the place, but soon answered to our 
knocking, and got some tea for us in a sort of kitchen or 
common room, tapestried with old newspapers, pasted against 
the wall. The bed-chamber to which my wife and I Tvere 
shown, was a large, low, ghostly room; with a quantity of 
withered branches on the hearth, and two doors without any 
fastening, opposite to each other, both opening on the black 
night and wild country, and so contrived, that one of them 
always blew the other open : a novelty in domestic archi- 
tecture, which I do not remember to have seen before, and 
which I was somewhat disconcerted to have forced on my 
attention after getting into bed, as I had a considerable sum 
in gold for our travelling expenses, in my di-essing-case. 
Some of the luggage, however, piled against the panels, soon 
settled this difficulty, and my sleep would not have been very 
much affected that night, I believe, though it had failed 
to do so. 

My Boston friend climbed up to bed, somewhere in the roof, 
where another guest was already snoring hugely. But being 
bitten beyond his power of endurance, he turned out again, 
and fled for shelter to the coach, which was airing itself in 
front of the house. This was not a ver}'- politic step, as it 
turned out ; for the pigs scenting him, and looking upon the 
coach as a kind of pie with some manner of meat inside, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 881 

grunted round it so hideously, that he was afraid to come out 
again, and lay there shivering, till morning. Nor was it 
possible to warm him, when he did come out, by means of a 
glass of brandy ; for in Indian villages, the legislature, with a 
very good and wise intention, forbids the sale of spirits by 
tavern keepers. The precaution, however, is quite ineilica- 
cious, for the Indians never fail to procure liquor of a worse 
kind, at a dearer price, from travelling pedlars. 

It is a settlement of the Wyandot Indians who inhabit this 
place. Among the company at breakfast was a mild old 
gentleman, who had been for many years employed by the 
United States Government in conducting negotiations with the 
Indians, and who had just concluded a treaty with these 
people by which they bound themselves, in consideration of a 
certain annual sum, to remove next year to some land provided 
for them, west of the Mississippi, and a little way beyond 
St. Louis. He gave me a moving account of their strong 
attachment to the familiar scenes of their infancy, and in 
particular to the buiial-places of their kindred ; and of their 
great reluctance to leave them. He had witnessed many such 
removals, and always with pain, though he knew that they 
departed for their own good. The question whether this tribe 
should go or stay, had been discussed among them a day or 
two before, in a hut erected for the purpose, the logs of which 
still lay upon the ground before the inn. When the speaking 
was done, the ayes and noes were ranged on opposite sides, 
and every male adult voted in his turn. The moment the 
result was known, the minority (a large one) cheerfully 
jdelded to the rest, and withdrew all kind of opposition. 

We met some of these poor Indians afterwards, riding on 
shaggy ponies. They were so like the meaner sort of gipsies, 
that if I could have seen any of them in England, I should 
have concluded, as a matter of course, that they belonged to 
that wandering and restless people. 

Leaving this town directly after breakfast, we pushed 
forward again, over a rather worse road than yesterday, if 
possible, and arrived about noon at Tiffin, where we parted 
with the extra. At two o'clock we took the railroad ; tho 
travelling on which was very slow, its construction being 
indifferent, and the ground wet and marshy ; and arrived at 
Sandusky in time to dine that evening. We put up at a 
comfortable little hotel on the brink of Lake Erie, lay there 



382 AMERICAN NOTES 

that night, and had no choice but to wait there next day, 
until a steamboat bound for Buffalo appeared. The to\yn, 
which was sluggish and uninteresting enough, was something 
like the back of an English watering-place, out of the season. 

Our host, who was very attentive and anxious to make us 
comfortable, was a handsome middle-aged man, who had come 
to this town from New England, in which part of the country 
he was ''raised." When I say that he constantly walked in 
and out of the room with his hat on ; and stopped to converse 
in the same free-and-easy state ; and lay down on our sofa, 
and pulled his newspaper out of his pocket, and read it at his 
ease ; I merely mention these traits as characteristic of the 
country : not at all as being matter of complaint, or as having 
been disagreeable to me. I should undoubtedly be offended 
by such proceedings at home, because there they are not the 
custom, and where they are not, they would be impertinences ; 
but in America, the only desire of a good-natured fellow of this 
kind, is to treat his guests hospitably and well ; and I had no 
more right, and I can truly say no more disposition, to measure 
his conduct by our English rule and standard, than I had to 
quarrel with him for not being of the exact stature which 
would qualify him for admission into the Queen's grenadier 
guards. As little inclination had I to find fault with a funny 
old lady who was an upper domestic in this establishment, 
and who, when she came to wait upon us at any meal, sat 
herself down comfortably in the most convenient chair, and 
producing a large pin to pick her teeth with, remained per- 
forming that ceremony, and steadfastly regarding us mean- 
while with much gravity and composure (now and then 
pressing us to eat a little more), until it was time to clear 
away. It was enough for us, that whatever we wished done 
was done with great civility and readiness, and a desire to 
oblige, not only here, but everywhere else ; and that all our 
wants were, in general, zealously anticipated. 

We were taking an early dinner at this house, on the day 
after oui' arrival, which was Sunday, when a steamboat came 
in sight, and presently touched at the wharf. As she proved 
to bo on her way to Buffalo, we hurried on board with all 
ispeed, and soon left Sandusky far behind us. 

She Avas a large vessel of five hundred tons, and handsomely 
fitted up, though with high-pressui-e engines ; which always 
conveyed that kind of feeling to me, which I should be likely 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 383 

to experience, I tliink, if I had lodgings on the first floor of a 
powder-mill. She was laden with Hour, some casks of which 
commodity were stored upon the deck. The captain coming 
up to have a little conversation, and to introduce a friend, 
seated himself astride of one of these barrels, like a Bacchus 
of private life; and pulling a great clasp-knife out of his 
pocket, began to ''whittle" it as he talked, by paring thin 
slices off the edges. And he whittled with such industry and 
hearty good will, that but for his being called away very soon, 
it must have disappeared bodily, and left nothing in its place 
but grist and shavings. 

After calling at one or two flat places, with low dama 
stretching out into the lake, whereon were stumpy lighthouses, 
like windmills without sails, the whole looking like a Dutch 
vignette, we came at midnight to Cleveland, where we lay all 
night, and until nine o'clock next morning. 

I entertained quite a curiosity in reference to this place, 
from having seen at Sandusky a specimen of its literature in 
the shape of a newspaper, which was very strong indeed upon 
the subject of Lord Ashburton's recent arrival at Washington, 
to adjust the points in dispute between the United States 
Government and Great Britain : informing its readers that as 
America had ''whipped" England in her infancy, and whipped 
her again in her youth, so it was clearly necessary that she 
must whip her once again in her maturity : and pledging its 
credit to all True Americans, that if Mr. Webster did his duty 
in the approaching negotiations, and sent the English Lord 
home again in double quick time, they should, within two 
years, sing " Yankee Doodle in Hyde Park, and Hail Colum- 
bia in the scarlet courts of Westminster"! I found it a 
pretty town, and had the satisfaction of beholding the outside 
of the office of the journal from which I have just quoted. I 
did not enjoy the delight of seeing the wit who indited the 
paragraphs in question, but I have no doubt he is a prodi- 
gious man in his way, and held in high repute by a select 
circle. 

There was a gentleman on board, to whom, as I unin- 
tentionally learned through the thin partition which divided 
our state-room from the cabin in which he and his wife con- 
versed together, I was unwittingly the occasion of very great 
uneasiness. I don't know why or wherefore, but I appeared 
to run in his mind perpetually, and to dissatisfy him Yory 



384 AMERICAN NOTES 

mucli. First of all I heard liini say : and tlie most liidicroTis 
part of tlie business was, that he said it in my very ear, and 
could not have communicated more directly with me, if he had 
leaned upon my shoulder, and whispered me : '' Boz is on 
board still, my dear." After a considerable pause, he added, 
complainingly, "Boz keeps liimseK very close:" which was 
true enough, for I was not very well, and was lying* down, 
with a book. I thought he had done with me after this, but 
I was deceived ; for a long interval having elapsed, during 
which I imagine him to have been turning restlessly from side 
to side, and trying to go to sleep ; he broke out again, with 
" I suppose that Boz will be writing a book by-and-by, and 
putting all our names in it ! " at which imaginary consequence 
of being on board a boat with Boz, he groaned, and became 
silent. 

We called at the town of Erie, at eight o'clock that night, 
and lay there an hour. Between five and six next morning, 
we arrived at Buffalo, where we breakfasted ; and being too 
near the Great Falls to wait patiently anj^where else, we set 
off by the train, the same morning at nine o'clock, to Niagara. 

It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist 
falling ; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and 
wintry. ^^Tienever the train halted, I listened for the roar ; 
and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I 
knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on 
towards them ; every moment expecting to behold the spray. 
Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two 
great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the 
dej)ths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted : 
and then for the fii'st time, I heard the mighty rush of water, 
and felt the ground tremble imderneath my feet. 

The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and 
half-melted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was 
soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two English officers 
who were crossing and had joined me, over some broken rocks, 
deafened by the noise, half-blinded by the spray, and wet to 
the skin. We were at the foot of the American Fall. I could 
see an immense torrent of water tearing headlong down from 
some great height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or 
anytliing but vague immensit}^ 

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were 
crossing the swoln river immediately before both cataracts, T 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION S86 

began to feel wliat it "was : but I was in a manner stuzined, 
and unable to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was 
not until I came on Table Hock, and looked — Great Heaven^ 
on what a fall of bright-green' water ! — that it came upon me 
in its full might and majesty. 

Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, 
the first effect, and the enduring one — instant and lasting — of 
the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tran- 
quillity, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of 
Eternal Rest and Happiness ; nothing of gloom or terror. 
Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of 
Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its 
pulses cease to beat, for ever. 

Oh, how the strife and trouble of daily life receded from 
my view, and lessened in the distance, during the ten memo- 
rable days we passed on that Euchanted Ground I What 
voices spoke fi'om out the thundering water ; wliat faces, faded 
from the earth, looked out upon me from its gleaming- 
depths ; what Heavenly promise glistened in those angels' 
tears, the drops of many hues, that showered around, and 
twined themselves about the gorgeous arches which the 
changing rainbows made I 

I never stirred in all that time from the Canadian side, 
whither I had gone at first. I never crossed the river again , 
for I knew there were people on the other shore, and in such 
a place it is natural to shun strange company. To wander to 
and fro all day, and see the cataracts from all points of view ; 
to stand upon the edge of the Great Horse Shoe Fall, marking 
the hurried water gathering strength as it approached the 
verge, yet seeming, too, to pause before it shot into the gulf 
below; to gaze from the river's level up at the torrent as it 
came streaming down ; to climb the neighbouring heiglits and 
watch it through the trees, and see the wreatliing water in the 
rapids hurrying on to take its fearful phmge ; to linger iu the 
shadow of the solemn rocks three miles below; watching the 
river as, stirred by no visible cause, it heaved and eddied and 
awoke the echoes, being troubled yet, far down beneatli the 
surface, by its giant leap ; to have Niagara before me, lighted 
by the sun and by the moon, red in the day's decline, and 
grey as evening slowly fell upon it ; to look upon it every day, 
and wake up iu the night and heai its ceaseless voice : this 
was enough. 

00 



886 AMERICAN NOTES 

I think in every quiet season now, still do those waters roll 
and leap, and roar and tumble, all day long ; still are the 
rainbows spanning them, a hundred feet below. Still, when 
the sun is on them, do they shine and glow like molten gold. 
Still, when the day is gloomy, do they fall like snow, or seem 
to crumble away like the front of a great chalk cliff, or roll 
down the rock like dense white smoke. But always does the 
mighty stream appear to die as it comes down, and always 
from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous ghost of 
spray and mist, which is never laid : which has haunted this 
place with the same dread solemnity since Darkness brooded on 
the deep, and that first flood before the Deluge — Light — came 
nifihing on Creation at the word of God. 



rOB GENERAL CIRCULATION. 887 



CHAPTER XV. 

IS CATTADA; TORONTO; KINGSTON; MONTREAL; QUEBEC; ST. JOHN'S. IS 
THE UNITED STATES AGAIN; LEBANON; THE SHAKER VILLAGE; AND 
"WEST POINT. 

I "WISH to abstain from instituting any comparison, or 
drawing any parallel whatever, between the social features of 
the United States and those of the British possessions in 
Canada. For this reason, I shall confine myself to a very 
brief account of our journeyings in the latter territory. 

But before I leave Niagara, I must advert to one disgusting 
circumstance, which can hardly have escaped the observation 
of any decent traveller who has visited the Falls. 

On Table Rock, there is a cottage belonging to a Guide, 
where little relics of the place are sold, and where visitors 
register their names in a book kept for the purpose. On the 
■wall of the room in which a great many of these volumes are 
preserved, the following request is posted : '* Visitors Mill 
please not copy nor extract the remarks and poetical effusions 
from the registers and albums kept here." 

But for this intimation, I should have let them lie upon the 
tables on which they were stream with careful negligence, 
like books in a drawing-room : being quite satisfied with the 
stupendous silliness of certain stanzas with an anti-climax at 
the end of each, which were framed and hung up on the wall. 
Curious, however, after reading this announcement, to see 
what kind of morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a 
few leaves, and found them scrawled all over with the vilest 
and the filthiest ribaldry that ever human hogs delighted in. 

It is humiliating enough to know that there are among men, 
brutes so obscene and worthless, that they can delight in 
laying their miserable profanations upon the very steps of 
Nature's greatest altar. But that these should be hoarded up 
for the delight of their fellow swine, and kept in a public 
place where any eyes may see them, is a disgrace to the 



S88 AMERICAN NOTES 

English, language in "wliicli they are written (though I 
hope few of these entries have been made by Englishmen), 
and a reproach to the English side, on which they are 
preserved. 

The quarters of our soldiers at Niagara, are finely and airily 
situated. Some of them are large detached houses on the 
plain above the Falls, which were originally designed for 
hotels; and in the evening time, when the women and 
children were leaning over the balconies watching the men as 
they played at ball and otlier games upon the grass before 
the door, they often presented a little picture of cheerfulness 
and animation which made it quite a pleasure to pass that 
way. 

At any garrisoned point where the line of demarcation 
between one country and another is so very narrow as at 
Niagara, desertion from the ranks can scarcely fail to be of 
frequent occurrence : and it may be reasonably supposed that 
when the soldiers entertain the wildest and maddest hopes of 
the fortune and independence that await them on the other 
side, the impulse to play traitor, which such a place suggests 
to dishonest minds, is not weakened. But it very rarely 
happens that the men wlio do desert, are happy or contented 
afterwards ; and many instances have been known in which 
they have confessed their grievous disappointment, and their 
earnest desire to return to their old service if they could but 
be assured of pardon, or of lenient treatment. Many of their 
comrades, notwithstanding, do the like, from time to time ; 
and instances of loss of life in the ejffort to cross the river with 
this object, are far from being uncommon. Several men were 
di'owned in the attempt to swim across, not long ago ; and 
one, who had the madness to trust himself upon a table as a 
raft, was swept down to the whirlpool, where his mangled 
body eddied round and round some da3-s. 

I am inclined to think that the noise of the Falls is very 
much exaggerated; and this will appear the more probable 
when the depth of the great basin in which the water is 
received, is taken into account. At no time during our stay 
there, was the wind at all high or boisterous, but we never 
heard them, three miles off, even at the very quiet time of 
sunset, though we often tried. 

Queenston, at which place the steamboats start for Toronto 
(or I should rather say at which place they call, for theii 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 889 

wharf IS at Lewiston on the opposite shore), is situated in a 
delicious valley, through which the Niagara river, in colour a 
very deep green, pursues its course. It is approached by a 
road that takes its winding way among the heights by which 
the town is sheltered ; and seen from this point is extremely 
beautiful and picturesque. On the most conspicuous of these 
heights stood a monument erected by the Provincial legislature 
in memory of General Brock, who was slain in a battle with 
the American Forces, after havin»- won the victorv. Some 
vagabond, supposed to be a fellow of the name of Lett, who is 
now, or Avho lately Avas, in prison as a felon, blew up this 
monument two years ago, and it is now a melancholy ruin, 
with a long fragment of iron railing hanging dejectedl}^ from 
its top, and Avaving to and fro like a wild ivy branch or 
broken vine stem. It is of much higher importance than it 
may seem, that this statue should be repaired at the public 
cost, as it ought to have been long ago. Firstl}', because it is 
beneath the dignity of England to allow a memorial raised in 
honour of one of her defenders, to remain in this condition, on 
the very spot where he died. Secondly, because the sight of 
it in its j^resent state, and the recollection of the unpunished 
outrage which brought it to this pass, is not ver}' likely to 
soothe down border feelings among English subjects here, or 
compose their border quarrels and dislikes. 

I was standing on the wharf at this place, watching the 
passengers embarking in a steamboat which preceded that 
whose coming we awaited, and participating in the anxiety 
with which a sergeant's wife was collecting her few goods 
together — keeping one distracted eye hard upon the porters, 
who were hm-rying them on board, and the other on a hoop- 
less washing tub for which, as being the most utterly worth- 
less of all her moveables, she seemed to entertain particular 
affection — when three or four soldiers with a recruit came up 
and went on board. 

The recruit was a likely J'oung fellow enough, strongly 
built and well made, but by no means sober : indeed he had 
all the air of a man who had been more or less drunk for some 
davs. He carried a small bundle over his shoulder, slunsr at 
the end of a walking-stick, and had a short pipe in his mouth. 
He was as dusty and dirty as recruits i\sually are, and hia 
shoes betokened that he had travelled on foot some distance, 
but he was in a very jocose state, and shook hands with triis 



890 AMERICAN NOTES 

soldier, and clapped that one on the back, and talked and 
laughed continually, like a roaring idle dog" as he was. 

The soldiers rather laughed at this blade than with him : 
seeming to say, as they stood straightening their canes in their 
hands, and looking coolly at him over their glazed stocks, 
" Go on, my boy, while you may ! you '11 know better by-and- 
by : " when suddenly the novice, who had been baclving 
towards the gangway in his noisy merriment, fell overboard 
before their eyes, and splashed heavily down into the river 
between the vessel and the dock. 

I never saw such a good thing as the change that came over 
these soldiers in an instant. Almost before the man was 
down, their professional manner, their stiffness and consti-aint, 
were gone, and they were filled with the most violent energy. 
In less time than is required to tell it, they had him out again, 
feet first, with the tails of his coat fiapping over his eyes, 
ever3'-thing about him hanging the wrong way, and the water 
streaming off at every thread in his threadbare dress. But 
the moment they set him upright and found that he was none 
the Avorse, they were soldiers again, looking over their glazed 
stocks more composedly than ever. 

The half-sobered recruit glanced round for a moment, as if 
his first impulse were to express some gratitude for his pre- 
servation, but seeing them with this air of total unconcern, and 
having his wet pipe presented to him with an oath by the 
soldier who had been b^^ far the most anxious of the party, he 
stuck it in his mouth, thrust his hands into his moist pockets, 
and witliout even shaking the water off his clothes, walked on 
board whistling ; not to say as if nothing had happened, but 
as if he had meant to do it, and it had been a perfect success. 

Our steamboat came up directly this had left the wharf, 
and soon b'ore us to the mouth of the Niagara ; where the 
stars and stripes of America flutter on one side, and the Union 
Jack of England on the other : and so narrow is the space 
between them that the sentinels in either fort can often liear 
tlie watchword of the ether country given. Thence we 
emerged on Lake Ontario, an inland sea ; and by half -past six 
o'clock were at Toronto. 

The country round this town being very flat, is bare of 
scenic interest ; but the town itself is full of life and motion, 
bustle, business, and improvement. The streets are well 
paved, and lighted with gas ; the houses are large and good ; 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 891 

the sliops excellent. Many of them have a display of goods 
in their windows, such as may be seen in thriving county 
towns in England ; and there are some which would do no 
discredit to the metropolis itself. There is a good stone 
prison here ; and there are, besides, a handsome church, a 
court-house, public offices, many commodious private resi- 
dences, and a government observatory for noting and recording 
the magnetic variations. In the College of Upper Canada, 
which is one of the public establishments of the city, a sound 
education in every department of polite learning can be had, 
at a very moderate expense : the annual charge for the in- 
struction of each pupil, not exceeding nine pounds sterling. 
It has pretty good endowments in the way of land, and is a 
valuable and useful institution. 

The first stone of a new college had been laid but a few 
days before, by the Governor General. It will be a handsome, 
spacious edifice, approached by a long avenue, which is 
already planted and made available as a public walk. The 
town is well adapted for wholesome exercise at all seasons, for 
the footways in the thoroughfares which lie beyond the prin- 
cipal street, are planked like floors, and kept in very good 
and clean repair. 

It is a matter of deep regret that political differences 
should have run high in this place, and led to most dis- 
creditable and disgraceful results. It is not long since gims 
were discharged from a window in this town at the successful 
candidates in an election, and the coachman of one of them 
was actually shot in the . body, though not dangerously 
wounded. But one man was killed on the same occasion ; 
and from the very window whence he received his death, the 
very flag which sliielded his murderer (not only in the com- 
mission of his crime, but from its consequences), was displayed 
again on the occasion of the public ceremony performed by 
the Governor General, to which I have just adverted. Of all 
the colours in the raicbow, there is but one which could be so 
employed : I need not say that flag was orange. 

The time of leaving Toronto for Kingston, is noon. By 
eight o'clock next morning, the traveller is at the end of his 
journey, which is performed by steamboat upon Lake Ontario, 
calling at Port Hope and Coburg, the latter a cheerful 
thriving little to^n. Vast quantities of flour form the chief 
item in the fi-eight of these vessels. We had no fewer than 



392 AMERICAN NOTES 

one thousand and eighty barrels on board, between Coburg 
and Kingston. 

The hitter place, which is now the seat of government in 
Canada, is a very poor town, rendered still poorer in the 
appearance of its marhet-phice by the ravages of a recent fire. 
Indeed, it may be said of Kingston, that one half of it appears 
to be burnt down, and the otlier half not to be built up. The 
Government House is neither elegant nor commodious, 3'et it 
is almost the only house of any importance in the neighboui'- 
hood. 

There is an admirable jail here, well and wisely governed, 
and excellently regulated, in every respect. The men were 
employed as shoemakers, ropemahers, blacksmiths, tailors, 
carpenters, and stonecutters ; and in building a new prison, 
which was pretty far advanced towards completion. T]ie 
female prisoners were occupied in needlework. Among them 
was a beautiful girl of twenty, who liad been there nearly 
three j-ears. She acted as bearer of secret despatches for the 
self-styled Patriots on Navy Island, during the Canadian 
Insurrection : sometimes dressing as a girl, and carrying 
them in her stays ; sometimes attiring lierself as a boy, and 
secreting them in tlie lining of her hat. In the latter 
character she always rode as a boy Avould, which was nothing 
to her, for she could govern an}' horse that any m.an could 
ride, and could drive four-in-hand M-ith the best wliip in those 
parts. Setting forth on one of her patriotic missions, she 
appropriated to herself the first horse she could lay her hands 
on ; and this offence had brought her where I saw her. She 
had quite a lovely face, though, as the reader may suppose 
from this sketch of her history, there was a lurking devil in 
her bright 03-0, which looked out pretty sharply from between 
her prison, bars. 

There is a bomb-proof fort here of great strength, wliicK 
occupies a bold position, and is capable, doubtless, of doing 
good service ; tliough the town is much too close upon the 
frontier to be long held, I sliould imagine, for its present 
purpose in troubled times. There is also a small navy-3'ard, 
where a couple of Government steamboats were building, and 
getting on vigorousl}'. 

We loft Kingston for Montreal on the tenth of ^lay, at lialf- 
past nine in the morning, and proceeded in a steamboat down 
the St. Lawrence river. The beauty of this noble stream at 



FOR GENEEAL CIRCULATION. 393 

almost any point, but especially in the commencement of this 
journey when it winds its way among the thousand Islands, 
can hardly be imagined. The number and constant suc- 
cessions of these islands, all green and richly wooded ; their 
fluctuating sizes, some so large that for half an hour together 
one among them will appear as the opposite bank of the river, 
and some so small that they are mere dimples on its broad 
bosom ; their infinite variety of shapes ; and the numberless 
combinations of beautiful forms which the trees growing on 
them, present : all form a picture fraught with uncommon 
interest and pleasure. 

In the afternoon we shot doTSTi some rapids where the river 
boiled and bubbled strangely, and where the force and head- 
long violence of the current were tremendous. At seven 
o'clock we reached Dickenson's Landing, whence travellers 
proceed for two or three hours by stage-coach : the navigation 
of the river being rendered so dangerous and difhciilt in the 
interval, by rapids, that steamboats do not make the passage. 
The number and length of those portar/es, over which the 
roads are bad, and the travelling slow, render the way 
between the towns of Montreal and Kingston somev/hat 
tedious. 

Our course lay over a wide, uninclosed tract of country at 
a little distance from the river side, whence the briglit 
warning lights on the dangerous parts of the St. LaAvrencc 
shone vividly. The night was dark and raw, and the way 
dreary enough. It was nearly ten o'clock when we reached 
the Avliarf where the next steamboat lay ; and went on board, 
and to bed. 

She lay there all night, and started as soon as it was day. 
The morning was ushered in by a violent thunderstorm, and 
was very wet, but gradually improved and brightened up. 
Going on deck after breakfast, I was amazed to see floating 
OY\'n with the stream, a most gigantic raft, with some thirty 
or forty wooden houses upon it, and at least as many flag 
masts, so that it looked like a nautical street. I saw man}- of 
these rafts afterwards, but never one so large. All the 
timber, or "lumber," as it is called in America, which is 
brouglit down the St. Lawrence, is floated down in this 
manner. When the raft reaches its place of destination, it is 
broken up ; the materials are sold ; and the boatmen return 
for m.ore. 



394 AMERICAN NOTES 

At eight we landed again, and travelled by a stage-coach 
for four hours tlii'ough a pleasant and well-cultivated countr}% 
perfectly French in every respect : in the appearance of the 
cottages ; the air, language, and dress of the peasantry, the 
sign-boards on the shops and taverns ; and the Virgin's 
shrines and crosses by the waj^side. Nearly every common 
labourer and boy, though he had no shoes to his feet, wore 
round his waist a sash of some bright colour : generally red : 
and the women, who were working in the fields and gardens, 
and doing all kinds of husbandry, wore, one and all, great flat 
straw hats with most capacious brims. There were Catholic 
Priests and Sisters of Charity in the village streets ; and 
images of the Saviour at the corners of cross-roads, and in 
other public places. 

At noon we went on board another steamboat, and reached 
the village of Lachine, nine miles from Montreal, by three 
o'clock. There, we left the river, and went on by land. 

Montreal is pleasantly situated on the margin of the St. 
Lawrence, and is backed by some bold heights, about which 
there are charming rides and drives. The streets are gene- 
rally narrow and irregular, as in most French towns of any 
age ; but in the more modern parts of the city, they are wide 
and airy. They display a great variety of very good shops; 
and both in the town and suburbs there are many excellent 
private dwellings. The granite quays are remarkable for 
their beaut}'', solidity, and extent. 

There is a very large Catholic cathedi-al here, recently 
erected ; with two tall spires, of which one is yet unfinished. 
In the open space in front of this edifice, stands a solitary, 
grim-looking, square brick tower, which has a quaint and 
remarkable appearance, and which the wiseacres of the place 
have consequently determined to pull do^^•n immediately. 
The Government House is very superior to that at Kingston, 
and the town is full of life and bustle. In one of the suburbs 
is a plank road — not footpath — five or six miles long, and a 
famous road it is too. All the rides in the vicinit}^ were made 
doubly interesting by the bursting out of spring, uhicli is liere 
BO rapid, that it is but a day's leap fi-om baiuen winter, to the 
blooming youth of summer. 

The steamboats to Quebec perform the journey in the 
night ; that is to say, they leave Montreal at six in the evening 
and arrive in Quebec at six next morning. We made this 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 896 

excursion during our stay in IMontreal (which exceeded a 
fortnight), and were charmed by its interest and beauty. 

The impression made npon the visitor by this Gibraltar of 
America : its giddy heights ; its citadel suspended, as it were^ 
in the aii' ; its picturesque steep streets and frowning gate- 
ways ; and the splendid views which burst upon the eye at 
every turn : is at once unique and lasting. 

It is a place not to be forgotten or mixed np in the mind 
with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of 
scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this 
most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about 
it which would make a desert rich in interest. The dan- 
gerous precipice along whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave 
companions climbed to glory ; the Plains of Abraham, where 
he received his mortal wound ; the fortress so chivalrously 
defended by Montcalm ; and his soldier's grave, dug for him 
while yet alive, by the bursting of a shell ; are not the least 
among them, or among the gallant incidents of history. That 
is a noble IMonument too, and worthy of two great nations, 
which perpetuates the memory of both brave generals, and on 
which their names are jointly written. 

The city is rich in public institutions and in Catholic 
churches and charities, but it is mainly in the prospect from 
the site of the Old Government House, and from the Citadel, 
that its surpassing beauty lies. The exquisite expanse of 
country, rich in field and forest, mountain-height and water, 
which lies stretched out before the view, with miles of Cana- 
dian villages, glancing in long white streaks, like veins along 
the landscape ; the motley crowd of gables, roofs, and chimney 
tops in the old hilly town immediately at hand ; the beautiful 
St. Lawrence sparkling and flashing in the sunlight ; and the 
tiny ships below the rock from which you gaze, whose distant 
rigging looks like spiders' webs against the light, while casks 
and barrels on their decks dwindle into toys, and busy 
mariners become so many puppets: all this, framed by a 
sunken window in the fortress and looked at from the 
shadowed room within, forms one of the brightest and most 
enchanting pictures that the eye can rest upon. 

In the spring of the year, vast numbers of emigrants who 
have newly arrived from England or from Ireland, pass 
between Quebec and Montreal on their way to the back woods 
and new settlements of Canada. If it be an entertaining 



896 AMERICAN NOTES 

lonrge (as I very often found it) to take a morning stroll 
upon the quay at Montreal, and see them grouped in hun- 
dreds on tlie puLlic Avharfs about tlieir chests and boxes, it is 
matter of deep interest to be tlieir fellow-passenger on one of 
lliese steamboats, and, mingling with the concourse, see and 
hoar them unobserved. 

The vessel in which we returned from Quebec to Montreal 
was crowded with them, and at night they spread their beds 
between decks (those who had beds at least), and slept so 
close and thick about our cabin door, that the passage to and 
fro was quite blocked up. They were nearly all English ; 
from Gloucestershire the greater part ; and had had a long 
winter-passage out ; but it was wonderful to see how clean 
the cliildren had been kept, and how untiring in their love 
and self-denial all the poor parents were. 

Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it 
is very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for 
the rich ; and the good that is in them, shines the brighter for 
it. In many a noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands 
and of fathers, whose private worth in both capacities is justly 
lauded to the skies. But bring him here, upon this crowded 
deck. Strip from his fair young wife her silken dress and 
jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early wrinkles on her 
brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much privation, 
array lier faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be 
nothing but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and 
you shall put it to the proof indeed. So change his station in 
tlie world, that he shall see in those young things who climb 
about his knee : not records of liis wealth and name : but 
little wrestlers with him for his daily bread ; so many poach- 
ers on his scanty meal ; so many units to divide his every 
sum of comfort, and farther to reduce its small amount. In 
lieu of the endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, 
heap upon him. all its pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, 
its fretfulness, caprice, and querulous endurance: let its prattle 
be, not of engaging inftint fancies, but of cold, and thirst, and 
hunger : and if his fatherly affection outlive all this, and he 
be patient, watchful, tender; careful of his children's lives, 
and mindful always of their jo3''s and sorrows ; then send liim 
back to Parliament, and Pidpit, and to Quarter Sessions, and 
when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live 
from hand to mouth, and labour hard to do it, let liim speak 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 897 

ap, as one tvIio knows, and tell those holders forth that they, 
by parallel with such a class, shoidd he High Angels in theii 
daily lives, and lay but humble siege to Heaven at last. 

Which of us shall say v/hat he would be, if such realities, 
Tvith small relief or change all through his days, were his ! 
Looking roimd upon these people ; far from home, houseless, 
indigent, wandering, weary with travel and hard living : and 
seeing how patiently they nursed and tended their young 
children ; how they consulted ever their wants first, then half 
supplied their own; what gentle ministers of 'hope and faith 
the women were ; how the men profited by their example ; 
and how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or 
harsh complaint broke out among them : I felt a stronger love 
and honour of my kind come glowing on my heart, and wished 
to God there had been many Atheists in the better part of 
human nature there, to read this simple lesson in the htXjk 
of Life. 

We left Montreal for New York again, on the thirtieth of 
May ; crossing to La Prairie, on the opposite shore of the St. 
Lawrence, in a steamboat ; we then took the railroad to 
St. John's, which is on the brink of Lake Champlain. Our 
last greeting in Canada was from the English officers in the 
pleasant barracks at that place (a class of gentlemen Avho had 
made every hour of our visit memorable by their hospitality 
and friendship) ; and with " Rule Britannia " sounding in our 
ears, soon left it far behind. 

But Canada has held, and always will retain, a foremost 
place in my remembrance. Few Englishmen are prepared to 
find it what it is. Advancing quietly ; old difierences settling 
down, and being fast forgotten ; public feeling and private 
enterprise alike in a sound and wholesome state ; nothing of 
flush or fever in its system, but health and vigour throbbing 
in its steady pulse : it is full of hope and promise. To me — 
who had been accustomed to think of it as somethinst left 
behind in the strides of advancing society, as someihing 
neglected and forgotten, slumbering and wasting in its sleep 
— the demand for labour and the rates of wages; the busy 
quays of Montreal; the vessels taking in their cargoes, and 
discharging them ; the amount of shipping in the difierent 
ports ; the commerce, roads, and public works, all made to last ; 
the respectability' and character of the public journals ; and 



898 AMERICAN NOTES 

tlie amount of rational comfort and happiness wliich. honest 
industry may earn : were very great surprises. The steam- 
boats on the lakes, in their conveniences, cleanliness, and 
safety ; in the gentlemanly character and bearing of their 
captains ; and in the politeness and perfect comfort of their 
social regulations ; are unsurpassed even by the famous Scotch 
vessels, deservedly so much esteemed at home. The inns are 
usually bad ; because the custom of boarding at hotels is not 
so general here as in the States, and the British officers, who 
form a large portion of the society of every town, live chiefly 
at the regimental messes : but in every other respect, the 
traveller in Canada will find as good provision for his comfort 
as in any place I know. 

There is one American boat — the vessel which carried us 
on Lake Champlain, from St. John's to Whitehall — which I 
praise very highly, but no more than it deserves, when I say 
that it is superior even to that in which we went from 
Queenston to Toronto, or to that in which we travelled from 
the latter place to Kingston, or I have no doubt I may add, 
to any other in the world. This steamboat, which is called 
the Burlington, is a perfectly exquisite achievement of neat- 
ness, elegance, and order. The decks are drawing-rooms ; 
the cabins are boudoirs, choicely furnished and adorned with 
prints, pictures, and musical instruments ; every nook and 
corner in the vessel is a perfect curiosity of graceful comfort 
and beautiful contrivance. Captain Sherman her commander, 
to whose ingenuity and excellent taste these results are solely 
attributable, has bravely and worthily distinguished himself 
on more than one trying occasion : not least among them, in. 
having the moral courage to carry BritisJi troops, at a time 
(during the Canadian rebellion) when no other conveyance 
was open to them. He and his vessel are held in universal 
respect, both by his own countrymen and ours ; and no man 
ever enjoj^ed the popular esteem, who, in his sphere of action, 
won and wore it better than this gentleman. 

By means of this floating palace we were soon in the 
United States again, and called that evening at Biudington ; 
a pretty town, -where we lay an hour or so. We reached 
Whitehall, where we were to disembark, at six next morning ; 
and might have done so earlier, but that these steamboats lie 
by for Bome hours in the night, in consequence of the lake 
becoming very narrow at that part of the journey, and difficult 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATIOIT. 899 

of navi oration in the dark. Its widtli is so contracted at one 
point, indeed, tliat they are obliged to warp round bj means 
of a rope. 

After breakfasting" at A^Tiiteball, we took tlie stage-coacb 
for Albany : a large and busy town, where we arrived between 
five and six o'clock that afternoon ; after a very hot day's 
journey, for we were now in the height of summer again. 
At seven we started for New York on board a great North 
River steamboat, which was so crowded with passengers that 
the upper deck was like the box lobby of a theatre between 
the pieces, and the lower one like Tottenham Court E,oad 
on a Saturday night. But we slept soundly, notwith- 
standing, and soon after five o'clock next morning, reached 
New York. 

Tarrying here, only that day and night to recruit after our 
late fatigues, we started off once more upon our last journey 
in America. We had yet five days to spare before embarking 
for England, and I had a great desire to see " the Shaker 
Village," which is peopled by a religious sect from whom it 
takes its name. 

To this end, we went up the North River again, as far as 
the town of Hudson, and there hired an extra to carry us to 
Lebanon, thirty miles distant : and of course another and a 
different Lebanon from that village where I slept on the night 
of the Prairie trip. 

The country through wliich the road meandered, was rich 
and beautiful ; the weather very fine ; and for many miles the 
Kaatskill mountains, where Rip Van Winkle and the ghastly 
Dutchmen played at ninepins one memorable gusty afternoon, 
towered in the blue distance, like stately clouds. At one 
point, as we ascended a steep hill, athwart whose base a 
railroad, yet constructing, took its course, we came upon an 
Irish colonv. With means at hand of buildina: decent cabins, 
it was wonderful to see how clumsy, rough, and wretched, its 
hovels were. The best were poor protection from the weather; 
the worst let in the wind and rain through wide breaches in 
the roofs of sodden grass, and in the walls of mud ; some had 
neither door nor window ; some had nearly fallen down, and 
were imperfectly propped up by stakes and poles ; all were 
minous and filthy. Hideously ugly old women and very 
buxom young ones, pigs, dogs, men, children, babies, pots, 
kettles, dunghills, vile refuse, rank straw, and standing 



400 AMERICAN NOTES 

^ater, all wallowing together in an inseparable heap, composed 
the furniture of every dark and dirty hut. 

Between nine and ten o'clock at ni^-ht, we arrived at 
Lebanon : which is reno"«Tied for its warm baths, and for a 
great hotel, well adapted, I have no doubt, to the gregarious 
taste of those seekers after health or pleasure who repair here, 
but inexpressibly comfortless to me. We were shown into 
an immense apartment, liglited by two dim candles, called the 
drawing-room : from which there was a descent by a flight of 
steps, to another vast desert called the dining-room : our bed 
chambers were among certain long rows of little white-washed 
cells, which opened from either side of a dreary passage ; and 
were so like rooms in a prison that I half expected to be 
locked np when I went to bed, and listened involuntarily for 
the turning of the key on the outside. There need be baths 
somewhere in the neighbourhood, for the other washing 
arrangements were on as limited a scale as I ever saw, even 
in America : indeed, these bedrooms were so very bare of 
even such common luxuries as chairs, that I should say they 
were not provided with enough of anything, but that I 
bethinlv myself of our having been most bountifully bitten all 
night. 

The house is very pleasantly situated, however, and we had 
a good breakfast. That done, we went to visit our place of 
destination, which was some two miles off, and the way to 
which was soon indicated by a finger-post, whereon was 
painted, '' To the Shaker Village." 

As we rode along, we passed a party of Shakers, who 
were at work npon the road ; who wore the broadest of all 
broad-brimmed hats; and were in all visible respects such 
very w^ooden men, that I felt about as much sympathy for 
them, and as much interest in them, as if they had been so 
many figiu-e-heads of ships. Presently we came to the 
beginning of tlie village, and alighting at the door of a 
house where tlio Shaker manufactures are sold, and which 
is the Jiead-quarters of the elders, requested permission to see 
the Shaker worship. 

Pending the conveyance of this request to some person in 
authority, wo walked into a grim room, wliere several grim 
hats were hanging on grim pegs, and the time was grimly 
told by a grim clock, which uttered every tick with a kind 
of struggle, as if it broke the grim silence reluctantly, and 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 401 

under protest. Ranged against the wall -were six or eight 
stiff high-backed chairs, and they partook so strongly of the 
general grimness, that one would much rather have sat on 
the floor than incurred the smallest obligation to any of them. 

Presently, there stalked into this apartment, a grim old 
Shaker, with eyes as hard, and dull, and cold, as the great 
round metal buttons on his coat and waistcoat ; a sort of 
calm goblin. Being informed of our desire, he produced a 
newspaper wherein the body of elders, whereof he was a 
member, had advertised but a few da,js before, that in con- 
sequence of certain unseemly interruptions which their 
worship had received from strangers, their chapel was closed 
to the public for the space of one year. 

As nothing was to be urged in opposition to this reason- 
able arrangement, we requested leave to make some trifling 
purchases of Shaker goods ; which was grimly conceded. We 
accordingly repaired to a store in the same house and on the 
opposite side of the passage, where the stock was presided 
over by something alive in a russet case, which the elder 
said was a woman ; and which I suppose was a woman, 
though I should not have suspected it. 

On the opposite side of the road was their j)lace of worship : 
a cool clean edifice of wood, with large windows and green 
blinds : like a spacious summer-house. As there was no 
getting into this place, and nothing was to be done but walk 
up and down, and look at it and tlie other buildings in the 
village (which were chiefly of wood, painted a dark red like 
English barns, and composed of many stories like English 
factories), I have nothing to communicate to the reader beyond 
the scanty results I gleaned the while our purchases were 
making. 

These people are called Shakers from their peculiar form of 
adoration, which consists of a dance, performed by the men and 
women of all ages, who arrange themselves for that purpose in 
opposite parties ; the men first divesting themselves of their 
hats and coats, which they gravely hang against the wall 
before they begin ; and tying a ribbon round their shirt- 
sleeves, as though they were going to be bled. They accompany 
themselves with a droning, humming noise, and dance until 
they are quite exhausted, alternately advancing and retiring 
in a preposterous sort of trot. The eflect is said to be 
unspeakably absurd : and if I may judge from a print of this 



402 AMERICAN NOTES 

ceremony wliich. I have in my possession ; and wliicli I am 
informed by those wlio have visited the chapel, is perfectly 
accurate ; it must be infinitely grotesque. 

They are governed by a woman, and her rule is understood 
to be absolute, though she has the assistance of a council of 
elders. She lives, it is said, in strict seclusion, in certain 
rooms above the chapel, and is never shown to profane eyes. 
If she at all resemble the lady who presided over the store, it 
is a great charity to keep her as close as possible, and I cannot 
too strongly express my perfect concurrence in this benevolent 
proceeding. 

All the possessions and revenues of the settlement are 
thrown into a common stock, which is managed by the elders. 
As they have made converts among people who were well to 
do in the world, and are frugal and thrifty, it is understood 
that this fund prospers : the more especially as they have 
made large purchases of land. Nor is this at Lebanon the 
only Shaker settlement : there are, I think, at least, thi'ee 
others. 

They are good farmers, and all their produce is eagerly 
purchased and highly esteemed. '* Shaker seeds," '' Shaker 
herbs," and '* Shaker distilled waters," are commonly an- 
nounced for sale in the shops of towns and cities. They are 
good breeders of cattle, and are kind and merciful to the 
brute creation. Consequently, Shaker beasts seldom fail to 
find a ready market. 

They eat and drink together, after the Spartan model, at a 
great public table. There is no union of the sexes : and every 
Shaker, male and female, is devoted to a life of celibacy. 
Rumour has been busy upon this theme, but here again I 
must refer to the lady of the store, and say, that if many of 
the sister Shakers resemble her, I treat all such slander as 
bearing on its face the strongest marks of wild improbability. 
But that they take as proseljtes, persons so young that they 
cannot know their own minds, and cannot possess much 
strength of resolution in this or any other respect, I can assert 
from my own observation of the extreme juvenility of certain 
youthful Shakers whom I saw at work among the party on the 
road. 

They are said to be good di'ivers of bargains, but to be 
honest and just in their transactions, and even in horse-dealing 
to resist those thievish tendencies which would seem, for spme 



FOE, GENERAL CIRCULATION. 403 

undiscovered reason, to be almost inseparable from tliat branch, 
of traffic. In all matters they hold their own course quietly, 
live in their gloomy silent commonwealth, and show little 
desire to interfere with other people. 

This is well enough, but nevertheless I cannot, I confesS; 
incline towards the Shakers ; view them Avith much favour, or 
extend towards them any very lenient construction. I so 
abhor, and from my soul detest that bad spirit, no matter by 
what class or sect it may be entertained, which w^ould strip Kfe 
of its healthful graces, rob youth of its innocent pleasures, 
pluck from maturity and age their pleasant ornaments, and 
make existence but a narrow path towards the grave : that 
odious spirit which, if it could have had full scope and sway 
upon the earth, must have blasted and made barren tho 
imaginations of the greatest men, and left them, in their 
powder of raising up enduring images before their fellow- 
creatures yet imborn, no better than the beasts : that, in these 
very broad-brimmed hats and very sombre coats — in stiiT- 
necked solemn-visaged piety, in short, no matter what its 
garb, whether it have cropped hair as in a Shaker village, or 
long nails as in a Hindoo temple — I recognise the worst 
among the enemies of Heaven and Earth, who turn the water 
at the marriage feasts of this poor w^orld, not into wine but 
gall. And if there must be people vowed to crush tho 
harmless fancies and the love of innocent delights and gaieties, 
which are a part of human nature ; as much a part of it as 
any other love or hope that is our common portion : let them, 
for me, stand openly revealed among the ribald and licentious ; 
the very idiots know that they are not on the Immortal road, 
and will despise them, and avoid them readily. 

Leaving the Shaker vill^-e with a hearty dislike of the old 
Shakers, and a hearty pity for the young ones : tempered by 
the strong probability of their running away ^as they grow 
older and wiser, which they not uncommonly do : we returned 
to Lebanon, and so to Hudson, by the way we had come upon 
the previous day. There, we took steamboat doivn the North 
River towards New York, but stopped, . some four liours' 
journey short of it, at Vv^est Point, where we remained that 
night, and aU next day, and next night too. 

In this beautiful place : the fairest among the fair and 
lovely Higlilands of the North lliver : shut in by deep green 
heights and ruined forts, and looking down upon the distant 



404 AMERICAN NOTES 

town of Newburgli, along a glitteriug* path of sunlit water, 
with here and there a skiff, whose white sail often bends on 
some new tack as sudden flaws of wind come down upon lier 
from the gullies in the hills : hemmed in, besides, all round 
with memories of Wasliington, and events of the revolutionary 
war : is the Military School of America. 

It could not stand on more appropriate ground, and any 
ground more beautiful can hardly be. The course of educa- 
tion is severe, but well devised, and manly. Through June. 
July, and August, the young men encamp upon the spacious 
plain whereon the college stands ; and all the year their 
military exercises are performed there, dail3\ The term of 
study at this institution, which the State requires from all 
cadets, is four years; but, whether it be from the rigid naturo 
of the discipline, or the national impatience of restraint, or 
both causes combined, not more than half the number who 
begin their studies here, ever remain to finish them. 

The number of cadets being about equal to that of the 
members of Congress, one is sent here from every Con- 
gressional district : its member influencing the selection. 
Commissions in the service are distributed on the same 
principle. The dwellings of the various Professors are 
beautifully situated ; and there is a most excellent hotel for 
strangers, though it has the two drawbacks of being a total 
abstinence house (wines and spirits being forbidden to the 
students), and of serving the public meals at rather uncom- 
fortable hours : to wit, breakfast at seven, dinner at one, and 
supper at sunset. 

The beauty and freshness of this calm retreat, in the very 
dawn and greenness of summer — it was then the beginning 
of June — wore exquisite indeed. Leaving it upon the sixth, 
and returning to New York, to embark for England on the 
succeeding day, I was glad to think that among the last 
memorable beauties which had glided past us, and softened in 
the bright perspective, were those whose pictures, traced by 
no common hand, are fresh in most men's minds ; not easily 
to grow old, or fade beneath the dust of Time : The KaatskilJ 
Mountains, Sleepy Hollow, and the Tappaan Zee, 



POB, QEX^EEAL CIRCULATION. 405 



CHAPTEE XYI. 



THE PASSAGE HOME. 



I NEYER had SO much, interest before, and very likely I 
Bhall never have so much interest again, in the state of the 
wind, as on the long-looked-for morning of Tuesday the 
Seventh of June. Some nautical authority had told me a day 
or two previous, '' anything with west in it, will do ;" so when 
I darted out of bed at daylight, and throwing up the window, 
was saluted by a lively breeze from the north-west which had 
sprung up in the night, it came upon me so freshly, rustling 
with so many happy associations, that I conceived upon the 
spot a special regard for all airs blowing from that quarter of 
the compass, which I shall cherish, I dare say, until my own 
wind has breathed its last frail puff, and withdrawn itself for 
ever from the mortal calendar. 

The pilot had not been slow to take advantage of this 
favourable weather, and the ship which yesterday had been in 
such a crowded dock that she might have retired from trade 
for good and all, for any chance she seemed to have of going 
to sea, was now full sixteen miles away. A gallant sight she 
was, when we, fast gaining on her in a steamboat, saw her in 
the distance riding at anchor : her tall masts pointing up in 
graceful lines against the sky, and every rope and spar 
expressed in delicate and thread-like outline : gallant, too, 
when we, being aU aboard, the anchor came up to the sturdy 
chorus " Cheerily men, oh cheerily ! " and she followed proudly 
in the towing steamboat's wake : but bravest and most gallan* 
of all, when the tow-rope being cast adrift, the canvas fluttered 
from her masts, and spreading her white wings she soared 
away upon her free and solitary course. 

In the after-cabin we were only fifteen passengers in all, 
and the greater part were from Canada, where some of us had 
known each other. The night was rough and squally, so were 
the next two days, but they flew by quickly, and we were soon 



406 AMERICAN NOTES 

as cheerful and as snug a party, -witli an honest, manly-hearted 
captain at our head, as ever came to the resolution of being 
mutually agreeable, on land or water. 

We breakfasted at eight, lunched at twelve, dined at three, 
and took our tea at half-past seven. We had abundance of 
amusements, and dinner was not the least among them : firstly, 
for its own sake ; secondly, because of its extraordinary length : 
its duration, inclusive of all the long pauses between the 
courses, being seldom less than two hours and a half; which 
was a subject of never-failing entertainment. By way of 
beguiling the tediousness of these banquets, a select association 
was formed at the lower end of the table, below the mast, to 
whose distinguished president modesty forbids m.e to make any 
further allusion, which, being a very hilarious and jovial 
institution, was (prejudice apart) in high favour with the rest 
of the community, and particularly with a black steward, who 
lived for three weeks in a broad grin at the marvellous humoui* 
of these incorporated worthies. 

Then, we had chess for those who played it, whist, cribbage, 
books, backgammon, and shovelboard. In all weathers, fair 
or foul, calm or windy, we were every one on deck, walking 
Tip and down in pairs, lying in the boats, leaning over the 
side, or chatting in a lazy group together. We had no lack 
of music, for one played the accordion, another the violin, and 
another (who usually began at six o'clock a.m.) the key-bugle : 
the combined efi'ect of which instruments, when they all 
played different tunes, in different parts of the ship, at the 
same time, and within hearing of each other, as they some- 
times did (everybody* being intensely satisfied with his own 
performance), was sublimely hideous. 

When all these means of entertainment failed, a sail would 
heave in sight ; looming, perhaps, the very spirit of a ship, in 
the misty distance, or passing us so close that through our 
glasses we could see the people on her decks, and easily make 
out her name, and whither she was bound. For hours 
together we could watch the dolphins and porpoises as they 
rolled and leaped and dived around the vessel ; or those small 
creatures ever on the wing, the Mother Carey's chickens, which 
had borne us company from New York bay, and for a Avliole 
fortnight fluttered about the vessel's stern. For some c^^iys we 
had a dead calm, or very light winds, during which the crew 
amused themselves with fishing, and hooked an unlucky 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 407 

dolpliin, wlio expired, in all Ms rainbow colours, on tliG deck : 
an event of such, importance in our barren calendar, that after- 
wards we dated from tbe dolphin, and made tlie day on which 
he died, an era. 

Besides all this, wlien we were five or six days out, there 
began to be much talk of icebergs, of which wandering islands 
an imusual number had been seen by the vessels that had 
come into New York a day or two before we left that port, and 
of whose dangerous neighbourhood we were warned by the 
sudden coldness of the weather, and the sinking of the mercury 
in the barometer. ^\niile these tokens lasted, a double look- 
out was kept, and many dismal tales were whispered, after 
dark, of ships that had struck upon the ice and gone down in 
the night; but the wind obliging us to hold a southward 
course, we saw none of them, and the weather soon grew 
bright and warm again. 

The observation every day at noon, and the subsequent 
working of the vessel's course, was, as may be supposed, a 
feature in our lives of paramount importance ; nor were there 
wanting (as there never are) sagacious doubters of the captain's 
calculations, who, so soon as his back was turned, would, in 
the absence of compasses, measure the chart with bits of 
string, and ends of pocket-handkerchiefs, and points of snuffers, 
and clearly prove him to be wrong by an odd thousand miles 
or so. It was very edifying to see these un.believers shake 
their heads and frown, and hear them hold forth strongly upon 
navigation : not that they knew an5l:hing about it, but that 
they always mistrusted the captain in calm weather, or when 
the wind was adverse. Indeed, the mercury itself is not so 
variable as this class of passengers, whom you will see, when 
the ship is going nobly through the water, quite pale with 
admiration, swearing that the captain beats all captains ever 
known, and even hinting at subscriptions for a piece of plate ; 
and who, next morning, when the breeze has lulled, and all 
the sails hang useless in the idle air, shake their despondent 
heads again, and say, with screwed-up lips, they hope that 
the captain is a sailor — but they shrewdly doubt him. 

It even became an occupation in the calm, to wonder when 
the >vind ivould spring up in the favourable quarter, where, 
it was clearly shown by all the rules and precedents, it 
ought to have sprung up long ago. The fii-st mate, who 
whistled for it zealously, was much respected for his per- 



408 AMERICAN NOTES 

severance, and was regarded even by tlie unbelievers as a 
first-rate sailor. jNIany gloomy looks would be cast upward 
through, the cabin skylights at the flapping sails while dinner 
was in progress ; and some, growing bold in ruefulness, pre- 
dicted that we should land about the middle of July. There 
are always on board ship, a Sanguine One, and a Despondent 
One. The latter character carried it hollow at this period of 
the voyage, and triumphed over the Sanguine One at every 
meal, by inquiring where he supposed the Great Western 
(which left New York a week after us) was now : and where 
he supposed the ' Cunard ' steam-packet was now : and what 
he thought of sailing vessels as compared with steam-ships 
now : and so beset his life with pestilent attacks of that kind, 
that he too was obliged to affect despondency, for very peace 
and quietude. 

These were additions to the list of entertaining incidents, 
but there was still another source of interest. AVe carried 
in the steerage nearly a hundred passengers : a little world 
of poverty : and as we came to know individuals among 
them by sight, from looking down upon the deck "where they 
took the air in the day-time, and cooked their food, and very 
often ate it too, we became curious to know their histories, and 
with what expectations they had gone out to America, and on 
what errands they were going home, and Avhat their circum- 
stances were. The information we got on these heads from 
the carpenter, who had charge of these people, was often of 
the strangest kind. Some of them had been in America but 
three days, some but three months, and some had gone out in 
the last voyage of that very ship in which they were now 
retiu-ning home. Others had sold their clothes to raise the 
passage-money, and had hardly rags to cover them ; others 
had no food, and lived upon the charity of the rest : and one 
man, it was discovered nearty at the end of the voyage, not 
before — for he kept his secret close, and did not court com- 
passion — had had no sustenance whatever but the bones and 
scraps of fat he took from the plates used in the after -cabin 
dinner, when they were put out to be washed. 

The whole system of shipping and conveying these imfor- 
tunate pei-sons, is one tiiat stands in need of tlioroiigh revision. 
If an}' class deserve to be protected and assisted by the Govern- 
ment, it is that class who are banished from their native land 
in search of the bare means of subsistence. All that could be 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 409 

done for these poor people by the great compassion and hu- 
manity of the captain and officers was done, but they require 
much more. The law is bound, at least upon the English 
side, to see that too many of them are not put on board one 
ship : and that their accommodations are decent : not demor- 
alising and profligate. It is bound, too, in common humanity, 
to declare that no man shall be taken on board without his 
stock of provisions being previously inspected by some proper 
officer, and pronounced moderately sufficient for his support 
upon the voyage. It is bound to provide, or to require that 
there be provided, a medical attendant ; whereas in these ships 
there are none, though sickness of adults, and deaths of 
children, on the passage, are matters of the very commonest 
occurrence. Above all it is the duty of any Government, be 
it monarchy or republic, to interpose and put an end to that 
system by which a firm of traders in emigrants purchase of 
the owners the whole 'tween-decks of a ship, and send on 
board as many wretched people as they can lay hold of, on 
any terms they can get, without the smallest reference to the 
conveniences of the steerage, the number of berths, the 
slightest separation of the sexes, or anything but their own 
immediate profit. Nor is even this the worst of the vicious 
system : for, certain crimping agents of these houses, who 
have a per-centage on all the passengers they inveigle, are 
constantly travelling about those districts where poverty and 
discontent are rife, and temjDting the credulous into more 
misery, by holding out monstrous inducements to emigration 
which can never be realised. 

The history of every family we had on board was pretty 
much the same. After hoarding up, and borrowing, and 
begging, and selling everything to pay the passage, they had 
gone out to New York, exj)ecting to find its streets paved 
with gold; and had found them paved with very hard and 
very real stones. Enterprise was dull ; labourers were not 
wanted ; jobs of work were to be got, but the payment was 
not. They were coming back, even poorer than they went. 
One of them was carrying an open letter from a young English 
artisan, who had been in New York a fortnight, to a friend 
near Manchester, whom he strongly urged to follow him. One 
of the officers brought it to me as a curiosity. " This is tlie 
country, Jem," said the writer. " I like America. There is 
no despotism here ; that 's the great thing. Employment of 



410 AMERICAN NOTES 

all sorts is going a-begging, and wages are capital. Yon 
have only to clioose a trade, Jem, and be it. I haven't made 
choice of one yet, bnt I shall soon. At present I haven t quite 
made up my mind whether to he a carpenter — or a tailor J'^ 

There was yet another kind of passenger, and but one 
more, who, in the calm and the light winds, was a constant 
theme of conversation and observation among us. This was 
an English sailor, a smart, thorough-built, English man-of- 
war' s-man from his hat to his shoes, who was serving in 
the American navy, and having got leave of absence was on 
his way home to see his friends. When he presented himself 
to take and pay for his passage, it had been suggested to him 
that being an able seaman he might as well work it and save 
the money, but this piece of advice he very indignantly 
rejected: saying, ''He'd be damned but for once he'd go 
aboard-ship, as a gentleman." Accordingly, they took his 
money, but he no sooner came aboard, than he stowed his kit 
in the forecastle, arranged to mess with the crew, and the 
very first time the hands were turned up, went aloft like a 
cat, before anybody. And all through the passage there 
he was, first at the braces, outermost on the yards, per- 
petually lending a hand ever} where, but always with a sober 
dignity in his manner, and a sober grin on his face, which 
plainly said, '' I do it as a gentleman. For my own pleasure, 
mind you ! " 

At length and at last, the promised wind came up in right 
good earnest, and away we went before it, with ever}^ stitch 
of canvas set, slashing through the water nobly. There was 
a grandeur in the motion of the splendid ship, as overshadowed 
by her mass of sails, she rode at a furious pace upon the 
waves, which filled one with an indescribable sense of pride 
and exultation. As she plunged into a foaming valley, how 
I loved to see the green waves, bordered deep with white, 
come rushing on astern, to buoy her upward at their pleasure, 
and curl about her as she stooped again, but always own her 
for their haughty mistress still ! On, on we flew, with 
changing lights upon the water, being now in the blessed 
region of fleecy skies ; a bright sun lighting us by day, and a 
bright moon by night ; the vane pointing directly homeward, 
alike the truthful index to the favouring wind and to our 
cheerful hearts ; until at sunrise, one fair Monday morning — • 
the twenty-seventh of June, I shall not easily forget the day, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 411 

■ — there lay "before us, old Cape Clear, God bless it, showing, 
in the mist of early morning, like a cloud : the brightest and 
most welcome cloud, to us, that ever hid the face of Heaven's 
fallen sister — Home. 

Dim speck as it was in the wide prospect, it made the 
sunrise a more cheerful sight, and gave to it that sort of 
human interest which it seems to want at sea. There, as 
elsewhere, the return of day is inseparable from some sense of 
renewed hope and gladness ; but the light shining on the 
dreary waste of water, and showing it in all its vast extent of 
loneliness, presents a solemn spectacle, which even night, 
veiling it in darkness and uncertaint}^, does not surpass. The 
rising of the moon is more in keeping with the solitary 
ocean ; and has an air of melancholy grandeur, which in its 
soft and gentle influence, seems to comfort while it saddens. 
I recollect when I was a very young child having a fancy that 
the reflection of the moon in water was a path to Heaven, 
trodden by the spirits of good people on their way to God ; 
and this old feeling often came over me again, when I watched 
it on a tranquil night at sea. 

The wind was very light on this same Monday morning, but 
it was still in the right quarter, and so, by slow degrees, we 
left Cape Clear behind, and sailed along within sight of the 
coast of Ireland. And how merry we all were, and how 
ioyal to the George Washington, and how full of mutual con- 
gratulations, and how venturesome in predicting the exact 
hour at which we should arrive at Liverpool, may be easily 
imagined and readily understood. Also, how heartily we 
drank the captain's health that day at dinner; and how 
restless we became about packing up : and how two or three 
of the most sanguine spirits rejected the idea of going to bed 
at all that night as something it was not worth while to do, 
so near the shore, but went nevertheless, and slept soundly ; 
and how to be so near our journey's end, was like a pleasant 
dream, from which one feared to wake. 

The friendly breeze freshened again next day, and on we 
went once more before it gallantly : descrying now and then 
an English ship going homeward under shortened sail, while 
we with every inch of canvas crowded on, dashed gaily past, 
and left her far behind. Towards evening, the weather 
tiu-ned hazy, with a drizzling rain ; and soon became so thick, 
that we sailed, as it were, in a cloud. Still we swept om7ard 



412 AMERICAN NOTES 

like a phantom ship, and many an eager eye glanced up to 
where the Look-out on the mast kept watch for Holyhead. 

At length his long-expected cry was heard, and at the same 
moment there shone out from the haze and mist ahead, a 
gleaming light, which presently was gone, and soon returned, 
and soon was gone again. Whenever it came back, the eyes 
of all on board, brightened and sparkled like itself: and 
there we all stood, watching this revolving light upon the 
rock at Holyhead, and praising it for its brightness and its 
friendy warning, and lauding it, in short, above all other 
signal lights that ever were displayed, until it once more 
glimmei'ed faintly in the distance, far behind us. 

Then, it was time to fire a gun, for a pilot ; and almost 
before its smoke had cleared away, a little boat with a light 
at her mast-head came bearing down upon us, through the 
darkness, swiftly. And presently, our sails being backed, she 
ran alongside ; and the hoarse pilot, wrapped and muffled in 
pea-coats and shawls to the very bridge of his weather- 
ploughed-up nose, stood boldily among us on the deck. And 
I think if that pilot had wanted to borrow fifty pounds for an 
indefinite period on no security, we should have engaged to 
lend it him, among us, before his boat had dropped astern, 
or (which is the same thing) before every scrap of news in the 
paper he brought with him had become the common property 
of all on board. 

We turned in pretty late that night, and turned out pretty 
early next morning. By six o'clock we clustered on the deck, 
prepared to go ashore ; and looked upon the spires and roofs, 
and smoke, of Liverpool. By eight we all sat down in one of 
its Hotels, to eat and drink together for the last time. And 
by nine we had shaken hands all round, and broken up our 
social compan)'- for ever. 

The country, by the railroad, seemed, as we rattled through 
it, like a luxuriant garden. The beauty of the fields (so 
small they looked!), the hedge-rows, and the trees; the 
pretty cottages, the beds of flowers, the old churchyards, the 
antique houses, and every well-known object ; the exquisite 
delights of that one journey, crowding in the short compass of 
a summer's day, the joy of many years, and winding up with 
Home and all that makes it dear; no tongue can tell, or pen 
of mine describe. 



FOK GENERAL CLRCDLATION. 413 



CHAPTEE XVII. 

SLAVERY. 

The Tipliolders of slavery in America — of the atrocities of 
which system, I shall not write one word for which I have not 
ample proof and warrant — may be divided into three great 
classes. 

The first are those more moderate and rational owners of 
human cattle, who have come into the possession of them as 
so many coins in their trading capital, but who admit the 
frightful nature of the Institrution in the abstract, and perceive 
the dangers to society with which it is fraught : dangers 
which, however distant they may be, or howsoever tardy in 
their coming on, are as certain to fall upon its guilty head, as 
is the Day of .Judgment. 

The second consists of all those o-^ners, breeders, users, 
buyers and sellers of slaves, who will, until the bloody 
chapter has a bloody end, own, breed, use, buy, and sell them 
at all hazards ; who doggedly deny the horrors of the system, 
in the teeth of such a mass of evidence as never was brought 
to bear on any other subject, and to which the experience of 
every day contributes its immense amount ; who would, at 
this or any other moment, gladly involve America in a war, 
civil or foreign, provided that it had for its sole end and 
object the assertion of their right to perpetuate slavery, and to 
whip and work and torture slaves, unquestioned by any 
human authority, and unassailed by any human power ; who, 
when they speak of Freedom, mean the Freedom to oppress 
their kind, and to be savage, merciless, and cruel ; and of 
whom every man on his own ground, in republican America, 
is a more exacting, and a sterner, and a less responsible 
despot than the Caliph Haroun Abaschid in his angry robe 
of scarlet. 

The third, and not the least numerous or influential, is 
composed of all that delicate gentility which cannot bear a 



414 AMEEICAN NOTES 

Buperior, and cannot "brook an equal ; of that class whose 
Kepublicanism means, " I will not tolerate a man above me : 
and of those below, none must approach too near ;" whose 
pride, in a land where voluntary servitude is shunned as a 
disgrace, must be ministered to by slaves ; and whose inahen- 
able rights can only have their growth in negro wrongs. 

It has been sometimes urged that, in the unavarling efforts 
which have been made to advance the cause of Human Free- 
dom in the republic of America (strange cause for history to 
treat of!), sufficient regard has not been had to the existence 
of the first class of persons ; and it has been contended that 
they are hardly used, in being confounded with the second. 
This is, no doubt, the case ; noble instances of pecuniary and 
personal sacrifice have ah^eady had their growth among them ; 
and it is much to be regTctted that the guK between them 
and the advocates of emancipation should have been widened 
and deepened by any means : the rather, as there are, beyond 
dispute, among these slave-owners, many Idnd masters who 
are tender in the exercise of their unnatural poAver. Still it 
is to be feared that this injustice is inseparable from the state 
of things with which humanity and truth are called upon to 
deal. Slavery is not a whit the more endurable because 
some hearts are to be found which can partially resist its 
hardening influences ; nor can the indignant tide of honest 
wrath stand still, because in its onward course it overwhelms 
a few who are comparatively innocent, among a host of 
guilty. 

The ground most commonly taken by these better men 
among the advocates of slavery is this : " It is a bad system ; 
and for myself I would williugly get rid of it, if I could ; 
most willingly. But it is not so bad as you in England take 
it to be. You are deceived by the representations of the 
emancipationists. The greater part of m}^ slaves are much 
attached to me. You will saj' that I do not allow them to be 
severely treated ; but I will put it to you whether you believe 
that it can be a general practice to treat them inhumanly, 
when it would impair their value, and would be obviously 
against the interests of their masters." 

Is it the interest of any man to steal, to game, to waste his 
health and mental faculties by drunkenness, to lie, forswear 
himself, indulge hatred, seek desperate revenge, or do 
murder ? No. All these ai-e roads to ruin. And wliy, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION, 415 

then, do men tread them. ? Because sucli inclinations are 
among the vicious qualities of mankind. Blot out, ye friends 
of slavery, from the catalogue of human passions, brutal lust, 
cruelty, and the abuse of irresponsible power (of all earthly 
temptations the most difficult to be resisted), and when ye 
have done so, and not before, we will inquire whether it be 
the interest of a master to lash and maim the slaves, over 
whose lives and limbs he has an absolute control ! 

But again : this class, together with that last one I have 
named, the miserable aristocracy spawned of a false republic, 
lift up their voices and exclaim, " PubKc opinion is all suffi- 
cient to prevent such cruelty as you denounce." Public 
opinion ! ^^^ly, public opinion in the slave States is slavery, 
is it not ? Public opinion in the slave States has delivered 
the slaves over to the gentle mercies of their masters. Public 
opinion has made the laws, and denied the slaves legislative 
protection. Public opinion has knotted the lash, heated the 
branding-iron, loaded the rifle, and shielded the murderer. 
Pubhc opinion threatens the abolitionist with death, if he 
venture to the South ; and drags him with a rope about his 
middle, in broad unblushing noon, through the first city in 
the East. Public opinion has, within a few years, burned a 
slave alive at a slow fire in the city of St. Louis ; and public 
opinion has to this day maintained upon the bench that 
estimable Judge who charged the Jury, impanelled there to 
try his murderers, that their most horrid deed was an act of 
public opinion, and being so, must not be punished by the 
laws the public sentiment had made. Public opinion hailed 
this doctrine with a howl of wild applause, and set the pri- 
soners free, to walk the city, men of mark, and influence, and 
station as they had been before. 

Public opinion ! what class of men have an immense pre- 
ponderance over the rest of the community, in their power of 
representing public opinion in the legislature ? the slave 
owners. They send from their twelve States one hundred 
members, wliile the fourteen free States, with a free population 
nearly double, return but a hundred and forty-two. Before 
whom do the presidential candidates bow down the most 
humbly, on whom do they fawn the most fondly, and for 
whose tastes do they cater the most assiduously in their servile 
protestations ? The slave owners always. 

Public opinion ! hear the public opinion of the free South, 



416 AMERICAN NOTES 

as expressed by its own members in the House of Representa- 
tives at Washington. " I have a great respect for the chair," 
quoth North Carolina, '' I have a great respect for the chair as 
an officer of the house, and a great respect for him personally ; 
nothing but that respect prevents me from rushing to the table 
and tearing that petition which has just been presented for the 
abolition of slavery in the district of Columbia, to pieces." — 
"I warn the abolitionists," says South Carolina, ''ignorant, 
infuriated barbarians as they are, that if chance shall throw 
any of them into our hands, he may expect a felon's death." — 
" Let an abolitionist come within the borders of South 
Carolina," cries a third; mild Carolina's colleague; " and if 
we can catch him, we will try him, and notwithstanding the 
interference of all the governments on earth, including the 
Federal government, we will hang him." 

Public opinion has made this law. — It has declared that in 
Washington, in that city which takes its name from the father 
of American liberty, any justice of the peace may bind with 
fetters any negro passing down the street and thrust him into 
jail : no offence on the black man's part is necessary. The 
justice says, " I choose to think this man a runaway : " and 
locks him up. Public opinion impowers the man of law when 
this is done, to advertise the negro in the newspapers, warning 
his owner to come and claim him, or he will be sold to pay the 
jail fees. But supposing he is a free black, and has no owner, 
it may naturally be presumed that he is set at liberty. No : 
HE IS SOLD TO RECOMPENSE HIS JAILER. Tliis has been done 
again, and again, and again. He has no means of proving 
his freedom ; has no adviser, messenger, or assistance of any 
sort or kind ; no investigation into his case is made, or inquiry 
instituted. He, a free man, who may' have served for years, 
and bought his libert}'', is thrown into jail on no process, tbr 
no crime, and on no pretence of crime : and is sold to pay the 
jail fees. This seems incredible, even of America, but it ia 
the law. 

Public opinion is deferred to, in such cases as the following; 
which is headed in the newspapers : — 

" Interesting Law-Case. 

" An interesting case is now on trial in the Supreme Court, 
arising out of the following facts. A gentleman residing in 
Maryland had allowed an aged pair of his slaves, substantial 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULaTIOIT. 417 

thoug-li not legal freedom for several years. While thus 
living, a daughter was born to them, wlio grew up in the 
same liberty, until she married a free negro, and went with 
him to reside in Pennsylvania. They had several children, 
and lived unmolested until the original owner died, when hia 
heir attempted to regain them ; but the magistrate before whom 
they were brought, decided that he had no jurisdiction in the 
case. The owner seized the woman and her children in the night, 
and carried them to Mary land J ^ 

" Cash for negroes," " cash for negroes," " cash for 
negroes," is the heading of advertisements in great capitals 
down the long columns of the crowded journals. Woodcuts 
of a runaway negro with manacled hands, crouching beneath 
a bluff pursuer in top boots, who having caught him, grasps 
him by the throat, agreeably diversify the pleasant text. The 
leading article protests against '' that abominable and hellish 
doctrine of abolition, which is repugnant alike to every law of 
God and nature." The deh.cate niama, who smiles her acqui- 
escence in this sprightly writing as she reads the paper in her 
cool piazza, quiets her youngest child who clings about her 
skirts, by promising the boy " a whip to beat the little niggers 
with." — But the negroes, little and big, are protected by public 
opinion. 

Let us try this public opinion by another test, which is im- 
portant in three points of view : first, as showing how 
desperately timid of the public opinion slave owners are, in 
their delicate descriptions of fugitive slaves in widely cir- 
culated newspapers ; secondly, as showing how perfectly 
contented the slaves are, and how very seldom they run away ; 
thirdly, as exhibiting their entire freedom from scar, or 
blemish, or any mark of cruel infliction, as their pictures are 
drawn, not by lying abolitionists, but by their own truthful 
masters. 

The following are a few specimens of the advertisements in 
the public papers. It is only four years since the oldest among 
them appeared ; and others of the same nature continue to be 
published every day, in shoals. 

" Ran away, Negress Caroline. Had on a collar -^dth one 
prong turned down." 

" Ran away, a black woman, Betsy. Had an iron bar on 
her right leg." 

z a 



418 AMERICAN NOTES 

'' Ran away, tlie negro Manuel. jMucIi marked witli irons.'' 

^'' Ran away, the negress Fanny. Had on an iron band 
about her neck." 

*' Ran away, a negro boy about twelve years old. Had 
round liis neck a cbain dog-collar witb ' De Lampert ' engraved 
on it." 

'' Ran away, the negro Hown. Has a ring of iron on his 
left foot. Also, Grise, his wife, having a ring and chain on 
the left leg." 

'' Ran away, a negro boy named James. Said boy was 
ironed when he left me." 

*' Committed to jail, a man who calls 'his name John. He 
has a clog of iron on his right foot which will weigh four or 
five pounds." 

*' Detained at the police jail, the negro wench, Myra. Has 
several marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet." 

" Ran away, a negro woman and two children. A few 
days before she went off, I burnt her with a hot iron, on the 
left side of her face. I tried to make the letter M." 

" Ran away, a negro man named Henry ; his left eye out, 
some scars from a dirk on and under his left arm, and much 
scarred with the whip." 

'^ One hundred dollars reward, for a negro fellow, Pompey, 
40 years old. He is branded on the left jaw." 

'* Committed to jail, a negro man. Has no toes on the left 
foot." 

^' Ran away, a negro woman named Rachel. Has lost all 
her toes except the large one." 

" Ran away, Sam. He was shot a short time since through 
the hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." 

'' Ran away, my negro man Dennis. Said negro has been 
shot in the left arm between the shoulders and elbow, which 
has paralysed the left hand." 

'' Ran away, my negro man named Simon. He has been 
shot badly, in his back and right arm." 

*' Ran away, a negro named Arthur. Has a considerable 
scar across his breast and each arm, made by a knife j loves 
to talk much of the goodness of God." 

" Twenty-five dollars reward for my man Isaac. He has a 
Bear on his forehead, caused by a blow ; and one on his back, 
made by a shot from a pistol." 

" Ran away, a negro girl called Mary. Has a small seal 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 419 

over lier eje, a good many teeth missing, tlie letter A is 
branded on her cheek and forehead." 

^' Ran away, negro Ben. Has a scar on his right hand ; 
bis thumb and forefinger being injured by being shot last 
fall. A part of the bone came out. He has also one or two 
large scars on his back and hips." 

^' Detained at the jail, a mulatto, named Tom. Has a scar 
on the right cheek, and appears to have been burned with 
powder on the face." 

'' Ean away, a negro man named Ned. Three of his 
fingers are drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut. Has 
a scar on the back of his neck, nearly half round, done by a 
knife." 

'' Was committed to jail, a negro man. Says his name is 
Josiah. His back very much scarred by the whip ; and branded 
on the thigh and hips in three or four places, thus (J. M). 
The rim of his right ear has been bit or cut off." 

" Fifty dollars reward, for my fellow Edward. He has a 
scar on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his 
arm, and the letter E on his arm." 

'' Ran away, negro boy Ellie. Has a scar on one of his 
arms from the bite of a dog." 

*' Ran away, from the plantation of James Surgette, the 
following negroes : Randal, has one ear cropped ; Bob, has 
lost one eye ; Kentucky Tom, has one jaw broken." 

'' Ran away, Anthony. One of his ears cut off, and his 
left hand cut with an axe." 

'* Fifty dollars reward for the negro Jim Blake. Has a 
piece cut out of each ear, and the middle finger of the left 
Land cut off to the second joint." 

'^ Ran away, a negro woman named Maria. Has a scar 
on one side of her cheek, by a cut. Some scars on her 
back.'' 

** Ran away, the Mulatto wench Mary. Has a cut on the 
left arm, a scar on the left shoulder, and two upper teeth 
missing." 

I should say, perhaps, in explanation of this latter piece of 
description, that among the other blessings which public 
opinion secures to the negroes, is the common practice of 
violently punching out their teeth. To make them wear iron 
collars by day and night, and to worry them with dogs, are 
practices almost too ordinary to deserve mention. 

B e2 



420 AMERICAN NOTES 

** Ran away, my man Fountain. Has holes in his ears, a 
scar on the right side of his forehead, has been shot in the 
hind parts of his legs, and is marked on the back with the 
whip." 

" Two hundred and fifty dollars reward for my negro man 
Jim. He is much marked with shot in his right thigh. The 
shot entered on the outside, halfway between the hip and knee 
joints." 

*' Brought to jail, John. Left ear cropt." 

*' Taken up, a negro man. Is very much scarred about the 
face and body, and has the left ear bit off." 

" Ran away, a black girl, named Mary. Has a scar on her 
cheek, and the end of one of her toes cut off." 

" Ptan away, my mulatto woman, Judy. She has had her 
right arm broke." 

" Ran away, my negro man, Levi. His left hand has 
been burnt, and I think the end of his forefinger is off." 

" Ran away, a negro man, named Washington. Has lost 
a part of his middle finger, and the end of his little finger." 

" Twenty-five dollars reward for my man John. The tip 
of his nose is bit off." 

" Twenty-five dollars reward for the negro slave Sally. 
"Walks as though crippled in the back." 

'' Ran away, Joe Dennis. Has a small notch in one of his 
ears." 

" Ran away, negro boy, Jack. Has a small crop out of his 
left ear." 

" Ran away, a negro man, named Ivory. Has a small piece 
cut out of the top of each ear." 

While upon the subject of ears, I may observe that a dis- 
tinguished abolitionist in New York once received a negro's 
ear, which had been cut off close to the head, in a general 
post letter. It was forwarded by the free and independent 
gentleman who had caused it to be amputated, with a 
polite request that he would place the specimen in hia 
*' collection." 

I could enlarge this catalogue with broken arms, and 
broken legs, and gashed flesh, and missing teeth, and lace- 
rated backs, and bites of dogs, and ])rands of red-hot irons 
innumerable : but as my readers will be sufficiently sickened 
and repelled abeady, I will turn to another branch of the 
subject. 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 421 

These advertisements, of whicli a similar collection might 
be m.ade for every year, and month, and week, and day ; and 
which are coolly read in families as things of course, and as 
a part of the current news and small-talk ; will serve to show 
how very much tlie slaves profit by public opinion, and bow 
tender it is in their behalf. But it may be worth while to 
inquire how the slave o^Tiers, and the class of society to 
wbicli great numbers of them belong, defer to public opinion 
in their conduct, not to their slaves but to each other ; how 
they are accustomed to restrain their passions ; what their bear- 
ing is among themselves ; whether they are fierce or gentle 
whether their social customs be brutal, sanguinary, and violent, 
or bear the impress of civilisation and refinement. 

That we may have no partial evidence from abolitionists in 
this inquiry, either, I will once more turn to their own news- 
papers, and I will confine myself, this time, to a selection 
from paragraphs which appeared from day to day, during 
my visit to America, and which refer to occurrences happening 
while I was there. The italics in these extracts, as in the 
foregoing, are my own. 

These cases did not all occur, it will be seen, in territory 
actually belonging to legalised Slave States, though most and 
those the very worst among them did, as their counterparts con- 
stantly do ; but the position of the scenes of action in reference 
to places immediately at hand, where slavery is the law ; and 
the strong resemblance between that class of outrages and the 
rest ; lead to the just presumption that the character of the 
parties concerned was formed in slave districts, and brutalised 
by slave customs. 

'^Horrible Tragedy. 

" By a slip from The Southport Telegrajoh, "Wisconsin, we 
learn that the Hon. Charles C. P. Arndt, Member of the 
Council for Brown county, was shot dead on the floor of the 
Council chamber, by James E,. Vinyard, Member from Grant 
county. The affair grew out of a nomination for Sheriff of 
Grant county. Mr. E. S. Baker was nominated and supported 
by Mr. Arndt. This nomination was oxJi^osed by Vinyard, 
who wanted the appointment to vest in his own brother. , In 
the course of debate, the deceased made some statements 
which Vinyard pronounced false, and made use of violent 
and insulting language, dealing largely in personalities, to 



422 AMERICAN NOTES. 

which Mr. A. made no reply. After the adjournment, Mr. A. 
stepped up to Vinyard, and requested him to retract, which 
he refused to do, repeating the offensive words. Mr. Arndt 
then made a blow at Vinyard, who stepped back a pace, drew 
a pistol, and shot him dead. 

" The issue appears to have been provoked on the part of 
Vinyard, who was determined at all hazards to defeat the 
appointment of Baker, and who, himself defeated, turned his 
ire and revenge upon the unfortunate Arndt." 

" The Wisconsin Tragedy. 

" Public indignation runs high in the territory of Wis- 
consin, in relation to the murder of C. C. P. Arndt, in the 
Legislative Hall of the Territory. Meetings have been held 
in different counties of Wisconsin, denouncing the 'practice of 
secretly bearing arms in the Legislative chamhers of the country. 
We have seen the account of the expulsion of James R. 
Vinyard, the perpetrator of the bloody deed, and are amazed to 
hear, that, after this expulsion by those who saw Vinyard 
kill Mr. Arndt in the presence of his aged father, who was 
on a visit to see his son, little dreaming that he was to wit- 
ness his murder. Judge Dunn has discharged Vinyard on hail. 
The Miners' Free Press speaks in tenns of merited rebuke at 
the outrage upon the feelings of the people of Wisconsin. 
Vinyard was within arm's length of Mr. Arndt, when he took 
such deadly aim at him, that he never spoke. Vinyard might 
at pleasure, being so near, have only wounded him, but he 
chose to kill him." 

" Murder. 

" By a letter in a St. Louis paper of the 14th, we notice a 
terrible outrage at Burlington, Iowa. A Mr. Bridgman 
having had a difficulty with a citizen of the place, Mr. Ross ; 
a brother-in-law of the latter provided himself with one of 
Colt's revolving pistols, met Mr. B. in the street, and dis- 
charged the contents of five of the barrels at him: each shot 
taking effect. Mr. B., tliough horribly wounded, and dying, 
returned the fire, and killed Ross on the spot." 

Terrible death of Robert Potter. 

"From the ' Caddo Gazette,' of the 12th inst, we learn 
the frightful death of Colonel Robert Potter He 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 423 

was "beset in liis liouse by an enemy, named Rose. He sprang 
from his conch., seized his gnn, and, in his night clothes, rnshed 
from the house. For about two hundred yards his speed 
seemed to defy his pursuers ; but, getting entangled in a 
thicket, he was captured. Rose told him that he intended to 
act a generous part, and give him a chance for his life. He 
then told Potter he might run, and he should not be inter- 
rupted till he reached a certain distance. Potter started at 
the word of command, and before a gun was fired he had 
reached the lake. His first impulse was to jump in the 
water and dive for it, which he did. Rose was close behind 
him, and formed his men on the bank ready to shoot him as 
he rose. In a few seconds he came up to breathe ; and scarce 
had his head reached the surface of the water when it was 
completely riddled with the shot of their guns, and he sunk, 
to rise no more ! " 

" Murder in Arkansas. 

" We understand that a severe rencontre came off a few days 
since in the Seneca Nation, between Mr. Loose, the sub-agent 
of the mixed band of the Senecas, Quapaw, and Shawnees, 
and Mr. James Gillespie, of the mercantile firm of Thomas 
G. Allison and Co., of Maysville, Benton, County Ark, in which 
the latter was slain with a bowie-knife. Some difficulty had 
for some time existed between the parties. It is said that 
Major Gillespie brought on the attack with a cane. A severe 
conflict ensued, during which two pistols were fired by 
Gillespie and one by Loose. Loose then stabbed Gillespie 
with one of those never faiKng weapons, a bowie-knife. The 
death of Major G. is much regretted, as he was a liberal- 
minded and energetic man. Since the above was in type, we 
have learned that Major Allison has stated to some of our 
citizens in town that Mr. Loose gave the first blow. "VVe 
forbear to give any particulars, as the matter will he the subject 
of judicial investigation.^^ 

" Foul Deed, 

"The steamer Thames, just from Missouri river, brought 
us a handbill, ofi'ering a reward of 500 dollars, for the person 
"who assassinated Lilburn W. Baggs, late Governor of this 
State, at Independence, on the night of the 6th inst. Governor 
Baggs, it is stated in a written memorandum, was not dead., 
but m.ortally wounded. 



424 AMERICAN NOTES 

*' Since the above was written, we received a note from the 
clerk of the Thames, givinp: the following particulars. Gov. 
Baggs was shot by some villain on Friday, 6th inst., in the 
evening, while sitting in a room in his own house in 
Independence. His son, a boy, hearing a report, ran into 
the room, and found the Governor sitting in his chair, with 
his jaw fallen down, and his head leaning back ; on dis- 
covering the injury done his father, he gave the alarm. Foot 
tracks were found in the garden below the window, and a 
pistol picked up supposed to have been overloaded, and thrown 
from the hand of the scoundrel who fired it. Three buck 
shots of a heavy load, took effect ; one going through his 
mouth, one into the brain, and another probably in - or 
near the brain ; all going into the back part of the neck and 
head. The Governor was still alive on the morning of the 
7th ; but no hopes for his recovery by his friends, and but 
slight hopes from his physicians. 

*' A man was suspected, and the Sheriff most probably has 
possession of him by this time. 

''The pistul was one of a pair stolen some days previous 
from a baker in Independence, and the legal authorities have 
the description of the other." 

" Rencontre, 

*' An unfortunate a fair took place on Friday evening in 
Chartres Street, xn which one of our most respectable citizens 
received a dangerous wound, from a poignard in the abdomen. 
From the Bee (New Orleans) of yesterday, we learn the 
following particulars. It appears that an article was pub- 
lished in the French side of the paper on Monday last, 
containing some strictures on the Artillery Battalion for 
firing their guns on Sunday morning, in answer to those 
from the Ontario and Woodbury, and thereby much alarm 
was caused to the families of those persons who were out all 
night preserving the peace of the city. Major C. Gaily, 
Commander of the battalion resenting this, called at the office 
and demanded the author's name; that of M. P. Arpin was 
given to him, who was absent at the time. Some angry 
words then passed with one of the proprietors, and a challenge 
followed; the friends of both parties tried to arrange the 
affair, but failed to do so. On Friday evening, about seven 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 425 

o'clock, Majoi' Gaily met Mr. P. Arpin in Chartres Street, and 
accosted Mm. * Are you Mr. Arpin ? ' 

'' ' Yes, Sir.' 

*' ' Then I have to tell you that jou are a * " (applying 

an appropriate epithet.) 

*' ' I shall remind you of your words, sir.* 

" ' But I have said I would break my cane on your 
shoulders.' 

** ' I know it, but I have not yet received the blow.' 

*' At these words, Major Gaily, having- a cane in his hands, 
struck Mr. Arpin across the face, and the latter drew a poignard 
from his pocket and stabbed Major Gaily in the abdomen. 

"Fears are entertained that the wound will be mortal. 
We understand that Mr. Arpin has given security for his appear- 
ance at the Criminal Court to answer the charged 

" Affray in Mississip)pi. 

" On the 27th ult,, in an affray near Carthage, Leake 
county, Mississippi, between James Cottingham and John 
Wilburn, the latter was shot by the former, and so horribly 
wounded, that there was no hope of his recovery. On the 2nd 
instant, there was an affray at Carthage between A. C. Sharkey 
and George Goff, in which the latter was shot, and thought 
mortally wounded. Sharkey delivered himself up to the 
authorities, hut changed his mind and escaped ! " 

'' Personal Encounter, 

'* An encounter took place in Sparta, a few days since, 
between the barkeeper of an hotel, and a man named Bury. 
It appears that Bury had become somewhat noisy, and that 
the barkeeper, determined to preserve order, had threatened to shoot 
Bury, whereupon Bury drew a pistol and shot the barkeeper 
down. He was not dead at the last accounts, but slight hopes 
were entertained of his recovery." 

"Duel. 

'* The clerk of the steamboat Tribune informs us that an- 
other duel was fought on Tuesday last, by Mr. Bobbins, a 
bank oificer in Vicksburg, and Mr. Fall, the editor of the 
Vicksburg Sentinel. According to the arrangement, the 
parties had six pistols each, which, after the word * Fire ! ' 
they were to discharge as fast as they pleased. Fall fired two 



426 AMERICAN NOTES 

pistols without effect. Mr. Robbins' first sbot took effect in 
Fall's thigh., who feU, and was unable to continue the 
combat." 

" A fray in Clarke County. 

"An unfortunate affray occurred in Clarke county (Mo.) 
near Waterloo, on Tuesday the 19th ult., which originated in 
settling the partnership concerns of Messrs. M'Kane and 
McAllister, who had been engaged in the business of distilling, 
and resulted in the death of the latter, who was shot down 
by Mr. M'Kane, because of his attempting to take possession 
of seven barrels of whiskey, the property of M'Kane, which 
had been knocked off to McAllister at a sheriff's sale at one 
dollar per barrel. M'Kane immediately fled and at the latest 
dates had not been taken. 

*' This unfortunate affray caused considerable excitement in 
the neighbourhood, as both the parties were men with large 
families depending upon them and stood well in the com- 
munity." 

I will quote but one more paragraph, which, by reason 
of its monstrous absurdity, may be a relief to these atrocious 
deeds. 

*' Affair of Honour. 

*' We have just heard the particulars of a meeting which 
took place on Six Mile Island, on Tuesday, between two 
young bloods of our city: Samuel Thurston, aged fifteen, and 
William Hine, aged thirteen years. They were attended by 
young gentlemen of the same age. The weapons used on 
the occasion, were a couple of Dickson's best rifles ; the 
distance, thirty yards. They took one fii-e, without any 
damage being sustained by either party, except the ball of 
Thurston's gun passing through the crown of Hine's hat. 
Through the intercession of the Board of Honour, the challenge 
was withdrawn, and the difference amicably adjusted." 

If the reader will picture to himself the kind of Board 
of Honour which amicably adjusted the difference between 
these two little boys, who in any other part of the world 
would have been amicably adjusted on two porters' backs and 
soundly flogged with birchen rods, he wiU be possessed, no 
doubt, with as strong a sense of its ludicrous character, as 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 427 

that wliicli sets me laugMng wlienever its imag'e rises up 
before me. 

Now, I appeal to every liuman mind, imbued with the 
com.monest of common sense, and the commonest of common 
humanity ; to all dispassionate, reasoning creatures, of any 
shade of opinion ; and ask, with these revolting evidences of 
the state of society which exists in and about the slave 
districts of America before them, can they have a doubt of the 
real condition of the slave, or can they for a moment make a 
compromise between the institution or any of its flagrant 
fearful features, and their own just consciences ? Will they 
say of any tale of cruelty and horror, hoAvever aggravated in 
degree, that it is improbable, when they can turn to the public 
prints, and, running, read such signs as these, laid before 
them by the men who rule the slaves : in their own acts, and 
under their own hands ? 

Do we not know that the worst deformity and ugliness of 
slavery are at once the cause and the effect of the recldess 
licence taken by these free-born outlaws ? Do we not know 
that the man who has been born and bred among its wrongs ; 
who has seen in his childhood husbands obliged at the word 
of command to flog their wives ; women, indecently compelled 
to hold up their own garments that men might lay the heavier 
stripes upon their legs, driven and harried by brutal overseers 
in their time of travail, and becoming mothers on the field 
of toil, under the very lash itself ; who has read in youth, 
and seen his virgin sisters read, descriptions of runaway 
men and women, and their disfigured persons, which could 
not be published elsewhere, of so much stock upon a farm, 
or at a show of beasts : — do we not know that that man, 
whenever his wrath is kindled up, will be a brutal savage ? 
Do we not know that as he is a coward in his domestic life, 
stalking among his shrinking men and women slaves armed 
with his heavy whip, so he will be a coward out of doors, and 
carrj-ing cowards' weapons hidden in his breast will shoot 
men down and stab them when he quarrels ? And if our 
reason did not teach us this and much beyond ; if we were 
such idiots as to close our eyes to that fine mode of training 
which rears up such men; should we not know that they 
who among their equals stab and pistol in the legislative 
halls, and in tne counting-house, and on the market-place, 
and in all the elsewhere peaceful pursuits of life, must be to 



428 AMERICAN NOTES 

their dependants, even tlioiigli they were free servants, so 
many merciless and unrelenting tyrants ? 

What ! shall we declaim against the ignorant peasantry of 
Ireland, and mince the matter when these American task- 
masters are in question ? Shall we cry shame on the brutality 
of those who ham-string cattle : and spare the lights of 
Freedom upon earth who notch the ears of men and women, 
cut pleasant posies in the shrinking flesh, learn to write with 
pens of red-hot iron on the human face, rack their poetic 
fancies for liveries of mutilation which their slaves shall 
wear for life and carry to the grave, break living limbs as did 
the soldiery who mocked and slew the Saviour of the world, 
and set defenceless creatures up for targets ? Shall we 
whimper over legends of the tortures practised on each other 
by the Pagan Indians, and smile upon the cruelties of 
Christian men ? Shall we, so long as these things last, exult 
above the scattered remnants of that stately race, and 
triumph in the white enjoyment of their broad possessions ? 
Rather, for me, restore the forest and the Indian village ; in 
lieu of stars and stripes, let some poor feather flutter in the 
breeze ; replace the streets and squares by wigwams ; and 
though the death-song of a hundred haughty warriors fill tt.e 
air, it will be music to the shriek of one unhappy slave. 

On one theme, which is commonly before our eyes, and in 
respect of which our national character is changing fast, let 
the plain Truth be spoken, and let us not, like dastards, beat 
about the bush by hinting at the Spaniard and the fierce 
Italian. ^\T.ien knives are drawn by Englishmen in conflict 
let it be said and known : '* We owe this change to Republican 
Slavery. These are the weapons of Freedom. With sharp 
points and edges such as these. Liberty in America hews and 
hacks her slaves ; or, failing that pursuit, her sons devote 
them to a better use, and turn them on each other," 



FOE GENEEAL CIEGULATION. 429 



CHAPTER XYIIL 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



Thebe are many passages in tliis book, where I have heen 
at some pains to resist the temptation of trouLling my readers 
with my o^ti deductions and conckisions : preferring that they 
should judge for themselves, from such premises as I have laid 
before them. My only object in the outset, was, to carry 
them with me faithfully wheresoever I went : and that task I 
have discharged. 

But I may be pardoned, if on such a theme as the general 
character of the American people, and the general character 
of their social system, as presented to a stranger's eyes, I 
desire to express my own opinions in a few words, before I 
bring these volumes to a close. 

They are, by nature, frank, brave, cordial, hospitable, and 
affectionate. Cultivation and refinement seem but to enhance 
their warmth of heart and ardent enthusiasm ; and it is the 
possession of these latter qualities in a most remarkable 
degree, which renders an educated American one of the most 
endearing and most generous of friends. I never was so won 
upon, as by this class ; never yielded up my full confidence 
and esteem so readily and pleasurably, as to them ; never can 
make again, in half-a-year, so many friends for whom. I seem 
to entertain the regard of half a life. 

These qualities are natural, I implicitly believe, to the 
whole people. That they are, however, sadly sapped and 
blighted in their growth among the mass ; and that there are 
influences at work which endanger them still more, and give 
but little present promise of their healthy restoration ; is a 
truth that ought to be told. 

It is an essential part of every national character to pique 
itself mightily upon its faults, and to deduce tokens of its 
virtue or its wisdom from their very exaggeration. One great 
blemish in the popular mind of America, and the prolific 



430 AMERICAN NOTES 

parent of an innumerable brood of evils, is Universal Distrust. 
Yet the American citizen plumes himself upon tliis spirit, even 
wben he is sufficiently dispassionate to perceive the ruin it 
works ; and will often adduce it, in spite of his own reason, as 
an instance of the great sagacity and acuteness of the people, 
and their superior shrewdness and independence. 

" You carry," says the stranger, " this jealousy and distrust 
into every transaction of public life. By repelling worthy 
men from your legislative assemblies, it has bred up a class of 
candidates for the suffrage, who, in their every act, disgrace 
your Institutions and your people's choice. It has rendered 
you so fickle, and so given to change, that your inconstancy 
has passed into a proverb ; for you no sooner set up an idol 
firmly, than you are sure to pull it down and dash it into frag- 
ments : and this, because directly you reward a benefactor, or 
a public servant, you distrust him, merely because he is 
rewarded ; and immediately apply yourselves to find out, 
either that you have been too bountiful in your acknowledg- 
ments, or he remiss in his deserts. Any man who attains a 
high place among you, from the President downwards, may 
date his downfall from that moment ; for any printed lie that 
any notorious villain pens, although it militate directly against 
the character and conduct of a life, appeals at once to your 
distrust, and is believed. You will strain at a gnat in the way 
of trustfulness and confidence, however fairly won and well 
deserved ; but you will swallow a whole caravan of camels, if 
they be laden with unworthy doubts and mean suspicions. 
Is this well, think you, or likely to elevate the character of the 
governors or the governed, among you?" 

The answer is invariably the same : ^' There 's freedom of 
opinion here, you know. Every man thinks for himself, and 
we are not to be easily overreached. That 's how our people 
come to be suspicious." 

Another prominent feature is the love of " smart " dealing : 
which gilds over many a swindle and gross breach of trust ; 
many a defalcation, public and private ; and enables many a 
knave to hold his head up with the best, who well deserves a 
halter : though it has not been without its retributive opera- 
tion, for this smartness has done more in a few years to impair 
the public credit, and to cripple the public resources, than didl 
honesty, however rash, could have effected in a century. The 
merits of a broken speculation, or a bankruptcy, or of a 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 431 

successful scoundrel, are not gauged by its or his obserrance 
of the golden rule, "Do as you would be done by," but are 
considered with reference to their smartness. I recollect, on 
both occasions of our passing that ill-fated Cairo on the 
Mississippi, remarking on the bad effects such gross deceits 
must have when they exploded, in generating a want of con- 
fidence abroad, and discouraging foreign investment : but I 
was given to understand that this was a very smart scheme by 
which a deal of money had been made : and that its smartest 
feature was, that . they forgot these things abroad, in a very 
short time, and speculated again, as freely as ever. The 
following dialogue I have held a hundred times : *' Is it not a 
very disgraceful circumstance that such a man as So and So 
should be acquiring a large property by the most infamous 
and odious means, and notwithstanding all the crimes of 
which he has been guilty, should be tolerated and abetted by 
your Citizens? He is a public nuisance, is he not ? " ** Yes, 
sir." ''A convicted liar?" *'Yes, sir." "He has been 
kicked, and cuffed, and caned?" "Yes, sir." "And he is 
utterly dishonourable, debased, and profligate ? " " Yes, sir." 
" In the name of wonder, then, what is his merit ? " " Well, 
sir, he is a smart man." 

In like manner, all kinds of deficient and impolitic usages 
are referred to the national love of trade ; though, oddly 
enough, it would be a weighty charge against a foreigner that 
ho regarded the Americans as a trading people. The love of 
trade is assigned as a reason for that comfortless custom, so 
very prevalent in country towns, of married persons living in 
hotels, having no fireside of their own, and seldom meeting 
from early morning until late at night, but at the hasty public 
meals. The love of trade is a reason why the literature of 
America is to remain for ever unprotected : " For we are a 
trading people, and don't care for poetry :" though we do, by 
the way, profess to be very proud of our poets : while 
healthful amusements, cheerful means of recreation, and 
wholesome fancies^ must fade before the stern utilitarian joys 
of trade. 

These three characteristics are strongly presented at every 
turn, full in the stranger's view. But, the foul growth of 
America has a more tangled root than this ; and it strikes its 
fibres, deep in its licentious Press. 

Schools may be erected, East, West, North, and South : 



432 AMERICAN NOTES 

pupils be tauglit, and masters reared, by scores upon scores of 
tliousands ; colleges may thrive, cliurclies may be crammed, 
tem.perance may be diffused, and advancing knowledge in all 
other forms wallr through the land with giant strides : but 
while the newspaper press of America is in, or near, its 
present abject state, high moral improvement in that country 
is hopeless. Year by year, it must and Avill go back ; year by 
year, the tone of public feeling must sink lower down ; year 
by year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less 
account before all decent men ; and year by year, the memory 
of the Great Fathers of tlie Revolution must be outraged 
more and more, in the bad life of their degenerate child. 

Among the herd of journals which are published in the 
States, there are some, the reader scarcely need be told, of 
character and credit. From personal intercourse with accom« 
plished gentlemen connected with publications of this class, I 
have derived both pleasure and profit. But the name of these 
is Few, and of the others Legion ; and the influence of the 
good is powerless to counteract the mortal poison of the bad. 

Among the gentry of America ; among the well -informed 
and moderate : in the learned professions ; at the bar and on 
the bench : there is, as there can be, but one opinion, in 
reference to the vicious character of these infamous journals. 
It is sometimes contended — I will not say strangely, for it is 
natural to seek excuses for such a disgrace — that their influence 
is not so great as a visitor would suppose. I must be pardoned 
for saying that there is no warrant for this plea, and that 
every fact and circumstance tends directly to the opposite 
conclusion. 

When any man, of any grade of desert in intellect or 
character, can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, 
in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and 
bending the knee before this monster of depravity ; when any 
private excellence is safe from its attacks ; when any social 
confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency 
and honour is held in the least regard ; when any man in that 
Free Country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think 
for himself, and speak for himself, without humble reference 
to a censorship which, for its rampant ignorance and base dis- 
honesty, he utterly loathes and despises in his heart ; when 
those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it 
casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 433 

dare to set their heels upon, and crush, it openly, in the sight 
of all men : then, I will believe that its influence is lessening, 
and men are returning to their manly senses. But while that 
Press has its evil eye in every house, and its black hand in 
every appointment in the state, from a president to a postman ; 
while, with ribald slander for its only stock in trade, it is the 
standard literature of an enormous class, who must find their 
reading in a newspaper, or they will not read at all ; so long 
must its odium be upon the country's head, and so long must 
the evil it works be plainly visible in the Republic. 

To those who are accustomed to the leading English journals, 
or to the respectable journals of the Continent of Europe ; to 
those who are accustomed to anything else in print and paper ; 
it would be impossible, without an amount of extract for 
which I have neither space nor inclination, to convey an 
adequate idea of this frightftd engine in America. But if any 
man desire confirmation of my statement on this head, let him 
repair to any place in this city of London, where scattered 
numbers of these publications are to be found ; and there, let 
him form his own opinion.* 

It would be well, there can be no doubt, for the American people 
as a whole, if they loved the Real less, and the Ideal somewhat 
more. It would be well, if there were greater encouragement 
to lightness of heart and gaiety, and a wider cultivation of 
what is beautifid, without being eminently and directly useful. 
But here, I think the general remonstrance, '^ we are a new 
country," which is so often advanced as an excuse for defects 
which are quite unjustifiable, as being of right only the slow 
growth of an old one, may be very reasonably urged : and I 
yet hope to hear of there being some other national amuse- 
ment in the United States, besides newspaper politics. 

They certainly are not a humorous people, and their tem- 
perament always impressed me as being of a dull and gloomy 
character. In shrewdness of remark, and a certain cast-iron 
quaintness, the Yankees, or people of New England, unques- 
tionably take the lead ; as they do in most other evidences of 
intelligence. But in travelling about, out of the large cities 

* Note to the Original Edition. — Or let him refer to an able, and per- 
fectly truthful article, in The Foreign Quarterly Review, published in the 
present month of October ; to which my attention has been attracted, since 
these sheets have been passing through the press. He will find some specimena 
there, by no means remarkable to any man who has been in America, but 
eufB.ciently striking to one who has not. 

P p 



434 AMERICAN NOTES 

— as I have remarked in former parts of these volumes — ^I 
was quite oppressed by the prevailing seriousness and melan- 
choly air of business : which was so general and unvarying, 
that at every new town I came to I seemed to meet the very 
same people whom I had left behind me, at the last. Such 
defects as are perceptible in the national manners, seem, to 
me, to be referable, in a great degree, to this cause : which 
has generated a dull, sullen persistence in coarse usages, and 
rejected the graces of life as undeserving of attention. There 
is no doubt that Washington, who was always most scrupulous 
and exact on points of ceremony, perceived the tendency 
towards this mistake, even in his time, and did his utmost to 
correct it. 

I cannot hold with other writers on these subjects that the 
prevalence of various forms of dissent in America, is in any 
way attributable to the non-existence there of an established 
church : indeed, I think the temper of the people, if it ad- 
mitted of such an Institution being founded amongst them, 
would lead them to desert it, as a matter of course, merely 
because it tvas established. But, supposing it to exist, I doubt 
its probable efficacy in summoning the wandering sheep to 
one great fold, simply because of the immense amount of 
dissent which prevails at home ; and because I do not find in 
America any one form of religion with which we in Europe, 
or even in England, are unacquainted. Dissenters resort 
thither in great numbers, as other people do, simply because 
it is a land of resort ; and great settlements of them are 
founded, because ground can be purchased, and towns and 
villages reared, where there were none of the human creation 
before. But even the Shakers emigrated from England ; our 
country is not unknown to Mr. Joseph Smith, the apostle of 
Mormonism, or to his benighted disciples; I have beheld 
religious scenes myself in some of our populous towns which 
can hardly be surpassed by an American camp-meeting ; and 
I am not aware that any instance of superstitious imposture 
on the one hand, and superstitious credulity on the other, has 
had its origin in the United States, wliich we cannot more 
than parallel by the precedents of Mrs. Southcote, Mary Tofts 
the rabbit-breeder, or even Mr. Thom of Canterbury : wliich 
latter case arose sometime after the dark ages had passed 
away. 

The Republican Institutions of America undoubtedly lead 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 435 

the people to assert their self-respect and their equality ; but 
a traveller is bound to bear those Institutions in his mind, and 
not hastily to resent the near approach of a class of strangers, 
"who, at home, would keep aloof. This characteristic, when it 
was tinctured with no foolish pride, and stopped short of no 
honest service, never offended me ; and I very seldom, if ever, 
experienced its rude or unbecoming display. Once or twice 
it was comically developed, as in the following case ; but this 
was an amusing incident, and not the rule or near it. 

I wanted a pair of boots at a certain town, for I had none 
to travel in, but those with the memorable cork soles, which 
were much too hot for the fiery decks of a steam-boat. I 
therefore sent a message to an artist in boots, importing, with 
my compliments, that I should be hapi)y to see him, if 
he would do me the polite favour to call. He very kindly 
returned for answer, that he would " look round " at six 
o'clock that evening. 

I was lying on the sofa, with a book and a wine-glass, at 
about that time, when the door opened, and a gentleman in a 
stiff cravat, within a year or two on either side of thirty, 
entered, in his hat and gloves; walked up to the looking- 
glass ; arranged his hair ; took off his gloves ; slowly pro- 
duced a measure from the uttermost depths of his coat pocket ; 
and requested me, in a languid tone, to *' unfix" my straps. 
I complied, but looked with some curiosity at his hat, which 
was still upon his head. It might have been that, or it 
might have been the heat — ^but he took it off. Then, he sat 
himself down on a chair opposite to me ; rested an arm on 
each knee ; and, leaning forward very much, took from the 
ground, by a great effort, the specimen of metropolitan work- 
manship which I had just pulled off: whistling, pleasantly, 
as he did so. He turned it over and over ; surveyed it with 
a contempt no language can express; and inquired if I 
wished him to fix me a l)oot like that ? I courteously replied, 
thai provided the boots were large enough, I would leave the 
rest to him ; that, if convenient and practicable, I should not 
object to their bearing some resemblance to the model then 
before him ; but that I would be entirely guided by, and would 
beg to leave the whole subject to, his judgment and discretion. 
" You an't partickler, about this scoop in the heel I suppose 
then ? " says he : ** We don't foUer that, here." I repeated 
my last observation. He looked at himself in the glass again; 



436 AMERICAN NOTES 

went closer to it to dash a grain or two of dust out of the 
corner of his eye ; and settled his cravat. All this time, my 
leg and foot were in the air. " Nearly ready, sir ? " I 
inquired. ''Well, prett}^ nigh," he said; "keep steady." I 
kept as steady as I could, both in foot and face ; and having 
by this time got the dust out, and found his pencil-ease, he 
measured me, and made the necessary notes. When he had 
finished, he fell into his old attitude, and taking up the boot 
again, mused for some time. " And this," he said, at last, 
" is an English boot, is it ! This is a London boot, eh ? " 
" That, sir," I replied, " is a London boot." He mused 
over it again, after the manner of Hamlet with Yorick's skull; 
nodded his head, as who should say, " I pity the Institutions 
that led to the production of this boot!"; rose; put up his 
pencil, notes, and paper — glancing at himself in the glass 
aU the time — put on his hat; drew on his gloves very 
slowly; and finally walked out. When he had been gone 
about a minute, the door reopened, and his hat and his head 
reappeared. He looked round the room, and at the boot 
again, which was still lying on the floor ; appeared thoughtful 
for a minute; and then said ''Well, good artemoon." " Good 
afternoon, sir," said I : and that was the end of the interview. 
There is but one other head on which I wish to offer a 
remark ; and that has reference to the public health. In so 
vast a country, where there are thousands of millions of acres 
of land yet unsettled and uncleared, and on every rood of 
which, vegetable decomposition is annually taking place; 
where there are so many great rivers, and such opposite 
varieties of climate ; there cannot fail to be a great amount of 
sickness at certain seasons. But I may venture to say, after 
conversing with many members of the medical profession in 
America, that I am not singular in the opinion that much 
of the disease which does prevail, might be avoided, if a few 
common precautions were observed. Greater means of per- 
sonal cleanliness, are indispensable to this end ; the custom of 
hastily swallowing large quantities of animal food, three times 
a-day, and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal, 
must be changed ; the gentler sex must go more -^-isely clad, 
and take more healtliful exercise ; and in the latter clause, 
the males must be included also. Above aU, in public insti- 
tutions, and throughout the whole of every town and city, the 
system of ventilation, and drainage, and removal of impurities 



FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. 437 

requires to be thorouglily revised. Tliere is no local Legis- 
lature in America which, may not study Mr. Chadwick's 
excellent Report upon the Sanitary Condition of our Labouring 
Classes, with immense advantage. 



I HAVE now arrived at the close of this book. I have 
little reason to believe, from certain warnings I have had since 
I returned to England, that it will be tenderly or favourably 
received by the American people ; and as I have wiitten the 
Truth in relation to the mass of those who form their judg 
ments and express their opinions, it will be seen that I have 
no desii-e to court, by any adventitious means, the popular 
applause. 

It is enough for me to know, that what I have set down in 
these pages cannot cost me a single friend on the other side 
of the Atlantic, who is, in anything, deserving of the name. 
For the rest, I put my trust, implicitly, in the spirit in which 
they have been conceived and penned ; and I can bide my 
time. 

I have made no reference to my reception, nor have I 
suffered it to influence me in what I have written ; for, in 
either case, I should have offered but a sorry acknowledgment, 
compared with that I bear within my breast, towards those 
partial readers of my former books, across the Water, who 
met me with an open hand, and not with one that closed upon 
an iron muzzle. 



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